weshop's Blog
Category Leadership
The Right People by William Frank DiedrichGreat leaders surround themselves with great and skillful people. Jim Collins, author of Good to Great, and his team researched what it takes for organizations to achieve greatness. He identified great companies and found that they all had the same kind of leadership. These leaders were usually humble, yet passionate about the business they were in. Unlike many of the celebrity CEO's of today, they were ambitious for their organization to succeed, rather than ambitious for themselves. They focused their organizations on a combination of what they were passionate about doing, what they were good at doing, and what would drive their economic engine (sustain and/or make profitable). Collins states that one of the first things these leaders do is to surround themselves with the right people. Instead of spending time and money on motivational incentives, they find people who are already motivated. In other words, they recognize that true motivation comes from within. I have met many leaders who feel "stuck" with individuals who are not motivated to deliver the value that is needed. Most leaders do not have the luxury of bringing in new people. Quite often, you have to work with who you have. If people aren't performing, you usually have to give them a chance. If over time, they do not improve, you may be able to let them go. Yet, it does not serve you or your organization to focus your energy on "How do I get rid of this person?" Leadership is about helping others to find their own internal motivation. The question is not: "How do we get this person to do the work?" The questions are: "What can this person be passionate about? What are his best talents and how can those talents be used best in this organization?" As leaders, we should want for every person in our care to be excited about getting up in the morning and coming to work. If we can help them find this, we won't have to motivate them. People are motivated by meaning. Leaders create meaning where none seems apparent. At the very least, someone benefits from whatever work you are doing. That is cause for meaning. Enjoying your work is cause for meaning. Being skillful at what you do is cause for meaning. Honest, caring relationships are cause for meaning. Promoting growth and improvement through ongoing feedback, high expectations, and reasonable learning curves creates meaning. It is easy to focus our attention on where people fall short, and on what's wrong. This focus on things going wrong reinforces problems. Great leaders are able to spot and develop talent. They see what someone can do and they believe in it. They believe in it so strongly that the person is inspired to believe in himself. Having a strong belief in one's self is meaningful. Another effective question to ask is: "What barriers have been created that stifle the passion and skill of these people?" Often there are rules and ways of doing things that get in the way of the full expression of talents. For example, an employee knows how to solve problems for customers, but she must ask permission from a manager each time an incident occurs. Trusting her to function as a responsible adult would give more meaning to her in her job and better service to customers. The "right" person is inside of everyone. It is the responsibility of a leader to help people find that person within themselves. If they can't find that internal motivation where they presently are, then you help them go somewhere else where they can. Creating a self motivated group of people takes time and patience. It takes self reflection on the part of leaders, and the willingness to discipline one's thinking and behavior. Great leaders are passionate about their business and skillful at producing their products or services. Today's leader must also be passionate about bringing forth meaning and self motivation in each and every person who works in the organization. William Frank Diedrich is a speaker, executive coach, and the author of three books including Beyond Blaming: Unleashing Power and Passion in People and Organizations. William offers an online leadership class, The Leaders' Edge, that is both inexpensive and effective. This ten week class helps leaders to transcend ego issues and become truly great at what they do. Register at http://noblaming.comArticle Source: The Right People
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Don't Try to Make Your Workers Happy by Wally BockYou've heard the advice: if you make your workers happy, then they'll be productive. It's nonsense. For years, soft-headed types have looked at highly productive work groups and noticed something. Workers in the top performing groups also had higher morale than workers in other groups. "Aha!" thought the soft-heads, "happiness causes productivity." Never mind that there's no good research to support that. Never mind that the fields of business are littered with the dead bones of companies that believed it. Take the example of a small, regional air carrier from some time ago. Company management believed that if they made their workers happy, productivity and profitability would follow. They set about doing the things they thought would make their people happy. They paid their people very well, much more than other airlines. They gave them lots of perks on the job. And they gave employees lots and lots and lots of paid time off. Workers got paid time off for just about every holiday on anyone's calendar. They got paid time off for their birthday, unless they worked. Then they got triple time. There was lots of paid family leave. You get the idea. Productivity didn't go up. The airline was no more productive than the competition. But it was a lot less profitable because it was paying a whole lot more than competitors for the same amount of work. Eventually the airline went out of business. Then the employees were very sad. "Ok," you're thinking, "If top performing groups are filled with workers who are both happy and productive, and if happiness doesn't cause productivity, it must be the other way around." Nope. It turns out that some slave ships make pretty good time. Consider the early years of the Ford Motor Company. Henry Ford's vaunted assembly line set the pace of work and it was a brisk pace indeed. Workers and their families were scrutinized by Ford security and those of "poor moral character" were let go. The Ford assembly line wasn't a happy place to work then. But it was very productive. It was so productive, in fact, that Ford was able to buy vast holdings all over the world without borrowing a penny. The profits from the Model T were enough. If you're starting to despair, don't. Stay with me. Because we know what it takes to grow work groups that are both productive and happy. To be productive and happy, people need to feel like they're being treated fairly. They want to make enough money. They want their salary and benefit package to be comparable to other people doing similar work within the company and in other companies. After that, though, monetary rewards don't make a lot of difference. If people are being treated fairly and paid enough by the company, it's their boss that makes the big difference. Jeff Immelt is now the CEO of General Electric (GE). But his dad worked on the line for GE while Jeff was growing up. Here's what Jeff Immelt says. "When I would sit around the kitchen table with my dad, I never knew who the CEO of GE was. I knew my dad's boss. . . . [when he had a bad boss] He came home in a bad mood, uncertain about the future. And when he had a good boss, he was pumped." That's the secret to a happy and productive workforce. Give them good bosses up and down the line. Don't concentrate on making your workers happy or on making them productive. Instead concentrate on making your bosses good. Select your bosses, the people responsible for group performance, from a pool of qualified and engaged workers. Give them the training they need to be a good boss. Give them regular and usable feedback on how they're doing their job. Then, help your new bosses become good, experienced bosses. Keep training in basic one-on-one leadership skills, but go beyond the training room. Help your bosses get development opportunities where they can develop both skills and vision. Help them connect with other bosses to discuss leadership situations and issues. It's no mystery, but it's not easy. It takes time and resources. But building a cadre of great bosses is the way you build workgroups with high morale and high productivity. And those workgroups help you build a profitable company for the ages. Wally Bock is an author, speaker, consultant and coach who helps leaders improve the performance and morale of their teams. This material is adapted from Wally's latest book, Performance Talk: The One-on-One Part of Leadership (http://www.performancetalk.com). He also writes the Three Star Leadership Blog (http://blog.threestarleadership.com/). You'll also find tips and resources about all aspects of leadership at the Three Star Leadership site (http://www.threestarleadership.com/). Article Source: Don't Try to Make Your Workers Happy
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The End Of Leadership: Letting Things HappenBy Brent Filson Decades ago, a now renowned orchestra leader, just starting out as an assistant, experienced a defining moment that would shape his future. He was rehearsing the Cleveland Orchestra in a Chopin piano concerto. He recalls, 'An oboe solo went over me like some kind of tidal wave. I thought, ?Nothing could make that any more beautiful.' And it came straight from the oboist. It wasn't because I did something.'
He had hit upon a powerful principle of conducting that would come to inform his style; and in reading about it, I realized it's also a powerful, though seldom realized, leadership principle to inform your career. It's a principle that if manifested daily will make you a dramatically more effective leader. And it's a principle that calls for the end of leadership as it has been commonly known.
The principle is: The best results come not from what you make happen but from what you LET happen.
It might seem like a simple, if not simplistic, concept. Why is it so important and why does it call for something as seemingly presumptuous as the end of leadership?
Let's first look at the word and concept of leadership. 'Leadership' comes from an old Norse word meaning 'To make go.' The trouble is, people misunderstand who makes what go.
The orthodox view of leadership is that the leader makes things go by directing people and resources towards certain goals. But within the context of this principle, this view misses what great leadership is about.
Having consulted for several decades with leaders of all ranks and functions in top companies world wide, I've seen what great things can happen when the leader lets them happen.
In a recent interview, the conductor noted that conductors can control a performance only up to a certain point, and they go wrong if they want to control it further. He says: 'You have to leave room for the possibility that geniuses in the orchestra will bring you things you can't teach them. In rehearsal, I try to leave it short of tacking it down, because if it is tacked down, you can hear that all the way through. You can hear the conductor say, ?Do it this way.' And I don't want that. I want to feel they absorbed it, and they play it to you as if they were a large chamber group. And when they get near that, it seems like a success to me.'
To take this principle into your daily activities as a leader, do these three things.
1. Change your assumptions. The conductor, inspired by the oboist, changed his fundamental assumptions on how to bring out the best in an orchestra. So you as a leader, to adhere to the principle, should change your assumptions on how you relate to people to get results. Your trust in their abilities trumps your abilities in almost all cases.
Abraham Lincoln described this truth in another way: 'You cannot build character and courage by taking away a man's independence and initiative.'
I'm not talking about a simple change in mind set; to achieve great results by letting things happen, you should undergo a transformation of your consciousness so broad and deep that it animates your activities throughout your career. When you come to understand that your leadership is not just about compelling or persuading people to act in certain ways but helping them bring out the best in themselves, you'll make big advances in your effectiveness.
2. Be rigorous. Just as the conductor had to be working with highly skilled and disciplined musicians, you cannot apply this principle to unskilled, undisciplined people. Bringing out the best in people by letting things happen entails, on the part of everyone involved, hard work, clear communication, cultivation of job skills, and a dedication to practical processes.
For instance, for more than 20 years, I've been teaching leaders of all ranks and functions in top companies worldwide a practical process called the Leadership Talk. (My website shows more about it.) The Talk helps leaders not to order people to do things but have them want to do things. That ?want to' is the pivot point of getting great results by letting things happen.
3. Be results-oriented. The conductor understood the performance wasn't for his ego or the musicians but for the audience. This is a patently obvious point, but many leaders, strangely enough, miss this point. Just like conductors who are into 'tacking it down', these leaders focus on cementing their power at the expense of releasing the greater power inherent in the people they lead.
There is only one reason letting things happen can truly be a trumpet call for you to end your commitment to orthodox leadership: It gets results. In fact, if the imperative is not helping you get far more results than ever before, don't heed the call; stick with the old leadership methods.
Mind you, if you do answer the call, know that putting an end to orthodoxy may not happen all at once. The endeavor can be carried out many times daily for the rest of your career. You'll often fail. But keep trying. Fail forward, fail better.
Clearly, this approach is not for every leader, but when it's fruits become evident, it may turn out to be a skill most leaders will endeavor to master. And, by such mastery, you, like the conductor as a young assistant, will come to shape your future through truly beautiful moments that achieve more results.
2006 ? The Filson Leadership Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
About the Author: The author of 23 books, Brent Filson's recent books are, THE LEADERSHIP TALK: THE GREATEST LEADERSHIP TOOL and 101 WAYS TO GIVE GREAT LEADERSHIP TALKS. He is founder and president of The Filson Leadership Group, Inc. ? and for more than 21 years has been helping leaders of top companies worldwide get audacious results. Sign up for his free leadership e-zine and get a free white paper: '49 Ways To Turn Action Into Results,' at http://www.actionleadership.com For more about the Leadership Talk: http://www.theleadershiptalk.com
Source: www.isnare.com
Permanent Link: http://www.isnare.com/?aid=42114&ca=Leadership
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Why Most Leadership Training Is A Waste Of Money And What You Can Do About It.By Wally Bock A group of senior executives are finishing up a three-day program at a top leadership training center. They've already filled out evaluations of the courses they took and the instructors. Now they're grading the facilities and meals. Soon they'll be heading back home to see what work has piled up while they were gone.
This scene is played out countless times every day, all across the country. It also tells you a lot about the mistakes companies make with leadership training.
Companies spend millions every year to send top managers to multi-day, off-site leadership programs. At the same they spend only about 7 percent of the training budget on first line supervisors.
But it's those first line supervisors that make most of the difference. Jeff Immelt, current CEO at General Electric, says that when he was a boy, he always knew the name of his father's supervisor, but rarely knew the name of the CEO. That's normal.
First line supervisors determine whether workers are engaged or not. They're the leaders who assure that teams have both high morale and high productivity. Why not spend some training money on them to help them do a better job?
The other thing wrong with spending leadership training money on senior managers is that they're not likely to change much. A manager who's been plying the leadership trade for a couple of decades isn't likely to make a big, effective behavioral change because of a couple of classes.
To make matters worse, most leadership training uses ineffective methods. Companies spend millions every year on classroom-based training that isn't much different from what you'd see if you could go back in time to almost any Medieval university.
In both cases there's one person in front of the room talking to a bunch of other people. Oh sure, today there would be PowerPoint slides and the seats might be more comfortable, but Martin Luther would have no trouble recognizing what's going on.
In this medieval training model, the instructor lays out some basic principles and then works down to specific applications. That might be great for the teacher, but it's not the way that most human beings learn best.
Think about any baby you've been around. There's not a general principle in sight. The baby sees things, touches things, runs into things and tastes things and then turns all those experiences into general principles.
That's how most adults learn, too. The most effective sequence is from specific point or experience to general principle.
What we need is more leadership training that uses methods that are more effective than lecture, or even lecture with PowerPoint and handouts. We need to use more methods that offer opportunities to learn from specific, relevant situations. And we need to use more methods that allow for reflection.
But, just because training is different from our Medieval model doesn't automatically make it effective. There are a lot of programs out there based on the principle that we have to do something special to make learning fun. Other programs grow from the need for trainers and consultants to sell something 'new.'
That's why you have leadership training that isn't training at all, at least not in leadership. Executives can try outdoor adventure training which can be lots of fun or they can learn leadership by cooking, which probably helps the executive be more helpful at parties. But how do either of these make you a better leader? None of these trendy methods seem to do much about helping you learn leadership, but they're a fun way to spend the training budget.
Here's another really important thing. A lot of great classroom training never finds its way back to the workplace. It never seems to make any difference in what the leader-trainee does.
That's because companies spend their time and money on the training and forget about the learning. That's up to the individual, but companies usually don't even bother to set learning expectations or check to see whether a trainee is using what he or she was taught. They should.
Marshall Goldsmith reviewed how well 86,000 leadership training participants actually learned from the experience. He found that the people who went home, talked about the learning and worked, deliberately to implement new behaviors learned best. But those who just went back home and did no follow-up showed no improvement at all.
The sad fact is that we know how to do good leadership training; we're just not doing it. Here are some things your company should consider.
Spend time and money training your first line supervisors and new managers. Help them put together a self-development plan that will help them learn on the job. You'll get the most bang for your buck that way.
Make sure the leadership training you choose addresses specific skills and uses effective instructional techniques. Set specific learning objectives for everyone you send to training.
Make sure that people who go through training get help and encouragement when they get back on the job. Follow-up to see that they're working to implement what they learned.
About the Author: Wally Bock is the author of Performance Talk ( http://www.performancetalk.com/) and the Three Star Leadership blog ( http://blog.threestarleadership.com/). He coaches individual managers, and is a popular speaker at meetings and conferences. Contact him at lta@threestarleadership.com
Source: www.isnare.com
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