Effective Leadership: How Do You Know When You Are Getting It Right?
If you’ve spent time in a leadership role, you know that it is remarkably difficult to get good quality feedback on how you are doing and for that matter, how everyone else is doing under your leadership.
If you haven’t wondered about this, you are either naïve or you are caught up in all of the nice things that people say in your presence. Newsflash: almost no one tells the boss he stinks, when he’s in the room.
Some of the worst leaders that I’ve had the displeasure to cross paths with, plied their evil practices with glee, protected by the cheering throngs around them. Behind their backs however, conversations sounded a lot like a planning session for a greeting party for Caesar during March. If I’m not mistaken, I heard the sound of knives being sharpened.
Alternatively, some of the best leaders and managers that I’ve encountered struggled a great deal with this issue. They heard the same cheers but were curious and concerned enough to wonder whether the cheering was for the title or the person and practices.
Some organizations attempt to remedy this by the use of assessments of various types, and these absolutely can be helpful. Nonetheless, I find assessments a lot like wondering what the temperature is outside on a sunny day by turning on the television. It’s a lot more real if you stick your head out the door and feel it for yourself.
I write and talk and mentor from the perspective that a primary task of a leader is to create the effective working environment. While the pace and energy of the environment may vary depending upon business or cultural circumstances, it is always up to the leader to infuse the environment with the values and practices that support accountability, results, innovation, fair-play and even creativity and innovation, to name a few.
Taking this a step further, I encourage leaders to look for signs in the environment that their leadership practices are working. While this approach lacks the rigor that some HR professionals like about formal assessments, an astute leader can learn to stick her head out the door and get a pretty good feel for the temperature of her leadership practices.
The Seven Indicators of the Effective Work Environment
- Individuals and teams display a great deal of pride, collaboration and cooperation to meet and exceed objectives.
- Failure to meet or exceed objectives is met with healthy frustration that quickly is channeled into lessons-learned and “what we’ll do better” discussions.
- Regardless of individual roles, teams spontaneously assemble to meet specific challenges and then dissolve once the challenges have been met.
- The group becomes self-policing on quality, timeliness and conduct.
- The drive to innovate and create value comes from within the team not from management.
- The teams learn how to fight and to play together.
- Output tangibly supports strategic objectives and improves the ability of the organization to meet customer needs.
While there is a great deal of subjectivity in judging the Seven Indicators, I’m OK with you’ll know it when you see and feel it or when you don’t. The weatherman can give you all of the meteorological reasons behind the sunny day you see through the window, but until you step outside of your Chicago office in February and feel your nose hairs freeze on your first breath, you don’t truly know what it’s like out there. (OK, metaphors aren’t my strong suit!)
The Bottom-Line for Now:
The best leaders are critically aware of their role and power in shaping the environment on their teams and inside their organizations. They are also aware that almost no one will ever provide the boss honest, actionable feedback on performance. I encourage leaders to develop an extreme awareness of what is going on around them as the best indicator of their effectiveness. Pay attention, look, listen and then ask questions and take actions that help people solve problems. Do this enough and that sunny day might just feel a whole lot warmer.
Nine Power Techniques for Building Your Leadership Credibility
Filed under: "To Do" List, Career, Decision-Making, Leadership, Product Management, Professional Growth, Project Management
Whether you are a first-time leader, an experienced manager taking over a new team or an informal leader such as a project or product manager, you will be as successful as you are credible. Your credibility is your professional bedrock. Build on it carefully and constantly.
In my book as co-author with Rich Petro, Practical Lessons in Leadership, I compare credibility to a bank account. Credibility deposits are hard earned and the balance builds slowly over time as you prove yourself to be an effective, honest leader focused on developing and supporting your team and organization.
Most leaders (including informal leaders) are unaware of the fact that they are being watched and judged constantly. People naturally look for clues to a leader’s character. They compare words and actions and if those two don’t match, the verdict is fast and fair: not credible. They look for signs of hidden agendas, favoritism and gamesmanship.
For even the craftiest of politicians, people are perceptive and will base their commitment and support based on “blink” assessments.
You are on trial every day. Don’t forget it.
Nine Power Techniques to Help Build Leadership Credibility:
1. Serve & Support. While it sounds like the logo on the side of a police cruiser, the effective leader understands that he/she is working for his/her team and constantly reinforces this philosophy in both words and actions.
2. Create a Positive Working Environment. This includes working with team members to set behavioral expectations for performance, accountability, decision-making and resolving problems and then reinforcing those values and behaviors with consistent actions.
3. Teach. The best leaders are aware that their ultimate goal is to help develop others. They are teachers that use developmental opportunities and feedback as their primary educational tools.
4. Insulate & Showcase. These seemingly conflicting actions are part of the leader’s balancing act. The leader must learn how to insulate the team members from destructive interference while ensuring that they receive the visibility and support that they require. In particular, ensuring the right visibility for teams and members is a powerful motivational tool.
5. Facilitate & Make Decisions. More conflicting issues. As a teacher, the leader must learn to facilitate solution development and idea generation. However, when conditions require, he/she has no qualms about making and communicating decisions.
6. Communicate at Just the Right Volume. It’s easy to whiff on this one. Bombard your team with low-value communiques and you are a distraction. Offer too little and you’ll be accused of everything including the Lindbergh kidnapping. The best leaders work with teams and members to define needs and evaluate and improve communications effectiveness.
7. Anchor Communications in Goals. Just like a CEO works to constantly integrate strategies and actions in pursuit of creating value for customers, the leader ensures that team and individual goals are front and center and linked to the firm’s goals.
8. Dispense Accountability Fairly. Play favorites or let under-performers slide and not only will you destroy the team environment, you’ll eviscerate your own credibility as a leader. Remember, everyone is watching.
9. Live by the Coach’s Credo. If the team succeeds, it is because of the team. If it fails, it is because of the coach. Seriously, effective leaders don’t look for scapegoats.
Without credibility, your effectiveness is nil. Most people and most leaders are woefully ignorant of their perceived credibility. Walk in the door everyday with the goal of strengthening yours. Remember, you are being watched. Closely.
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