Effective Leadership: How Do You Know When You Are Getting It Right?

July 10, 2009 By 5 Comments

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

  1. Individuals and teams display a great deal of pride, collaboration and cooperation to meet and exceed objectives.
  2. 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.
  3. Regardless of individual roles, teams spontaneously assemble to meet specific challenges and then dissolve once the challenges have been met.
  4. The group becomes self-policing on quality, timeliness and conduct.
  5. The drive to innovate and create value comes from within the team not from management.
  6. The teams learn how to fight and to play together.
  7. 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.

Filed Under: "To Do" List, Leadership, Performance Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Leadership Caffeine: Strengthen Your Leadership Foundation

June 29, 2009 By 5 Comments

The best leaders in my opinion are guided by a strong sense of duty and responsibility. The individuals that succeed in motivating, inspiring and even changing the lives and careers of others operate with an underlying philosophical foundation that they draw upon to remain focused and steadfast in pursuing their daily activities.

Everyone else sort of wanders through the leadership woods, reacting more on instinct than acting as if they are being guided by a stronger sense of purpose and duty.

First-time leaders wander a great deal, often because they are thrust into the very difficult role of a leader without much more than a pat on the back and a disingenuous “let me know if you need any help.” Others get a two-day training class and a binder of materials that sit on the shelf in their offices for the next few years.

Mid-career leaders that survived those awkward first few years often settle into a pattern that includes guiding people on tasks and managing to minimize their own personal risk.

In both cases, the cost to our organizations is huge in real and in psychic terms. Floundering first-time leaders create tremendous disruption and take a significant toll on the unwitting victims around them. Mid-manager malaise sucks the energy and life out of a team and entire organizations, resulting in an employee culture where everyone seems to be walking around with their feet encased in concrete.

Unfortunately, I see far more concrete-encased teams and managers and floundering first-time leaders than those guided by a clear sense of duty and responsibility. I also hear from a lot of people that are caught up in those traps seeking a way out.

The good news is that many express a desire to change. First-time leaders would rather succeed than flail and a great number of people that have had the leadership life sucked out of them would like to renew and re-energize their careers.

One of the activities that I encourage those interested in changing and improving is to craft some form of personal philosophical statement that will guide and serve as a frequent reminder as to their true role. I have my own, and I call it The Leader’s Charter.

I’ve written about this before. It’s one of those topics and one of those important tools that bears repeating. The Charter helps remind me of my True North as a leader and allows me to align my priorities properly when I feel them drifting in the face of the urgent-unimportant. My version reads as follows:

Art’s Personal Leader’s Charter:

My primary role as a leader is to create an environment that:

Facilitates high individual and team performance against company and industry standards

Supports and promotes innovation in processes, programs and approaches

Encourages collaboration where necessary for objective achievement

And…

Promotes the development of my associates in roles that leverage their talents and interests and that challenge them to new and greater accomplishments.

I developed this as a younger leader and refined it over time based on my own experiences…both the successes and the failures. The words are noble and the thoughts lofty, but every word and phrase has a very distinct meaning for me in my leadership life.

I anchor on creating the effective environment as a core priority; never lose track of the fact that my firm is looking for performance and innovation and last and most important of all, I remind myself that my highest and best use is to help others develop.

The Charter has served me well.

Perhaps you know someone that is earnest in their desire to improve and hungry for something that will give context to their activities as a leader. Encourage them or help them create their own Charter. Use mine or parts of mine if it fits, or create something new from the ground up.

And when you or they are finished, put the charter in a place of prominence to both remind you of your role and priorities but also to show others how you view your role and what they can expect from you as a leader.

The words are important but of course, they are the easy part. The real payoff comes in striving to live up to Your Leader’s Charter.

Filed Under: "To Do" List, Career, Leadership, Leadership Caffeine, Performance, Professional Growth, Values Tagged With: , , , , , , ,