Too many of us wait for someone else to create the circumstances that allow us to be happy in our work. Expecting someone else to lift us up from our current situation is a fool’s errand blended with a real life frustration dream. No matter how much we sulk or complain about our lot, the only person responsible for changing the situation is the one staring back at us in the mirror.
Let’s face it, the new leadership role is a great testament to your prior success and the faith that your firm’s senior leaders place in your abilities to help build the future. You’ve gained their confidence and trust, but the hard work is still in front of you. You’ve got to earn the trust of your new team members. Here's a view on an approach that has an increasing body of behavioral science evidence on its side:
The business and management equivalent of The Quest of mythology and story is the pursuit of the secret ingredients…the behaviors, actions and approaches that if adopted, will allow one firm to outperform (measured by one or more of: growth, profitability, innovation, share price, market capitalization) a peer group for an extended period of time. Here are 7 core behaviors for successful management teams to adopt that will help them survive with their quest to sustain success:
You will cultivate a leadership style over time…in large part by learning from trial and error. You can accelerate the learning process and improve your effectiveness by remembering to adapt your interaction style to the behaviors and preferences of others, while never compromising your commitment to fairness, your firm’s values or your obligation to drive results.
It’s the challenging times that build your leadership character. During the rising tide situations, the game is simplified…the way forward is clear and the challenges defined. Exploit the opportunity; move fast to deliver more; execute, execute, execute. It’s when conditions change that the view ahead becomes one giant fog bank and leading suddenly turns difficult.
Businesses of all sizes, shapes and ages run into rough patches. Rapid growth, disruptive competitors or technologies, regulatory changes or the end of the road for well-worn strategies are all potential culprits in the move from success to struggle. It’s critical at this point for a firm’s leaders and managers to react carefully and appropriately in this unfamiliar terrain or they risk moving quickly from flail to fail. They invite flailure. Here are 5 ideas to stem the tide when the flailing starts:
I’m convinced one of the key limiting factors of management team effectiveness is the discomfort these high-powered functional experts have in talking with each other. While there are few quiet senior management team meetings, the words exchanged tend to be more about functional updates and carefully worded ideas or collegial debate over direction or investments than they are about the real issues confronting the firm. Here are 5 blocking and tackling ideas to help senior executives strengthen their communication effectiveness as a team:
An early career mentor offered this comment and it has been with me in one form or another throughout my career: “If you’re sleeping through the night, you’re not thinking hard enough about your job and career and you’re definitely not asking yourself the tough questions.” While I encourage a full night’s rest…we all need quality sleep to perform at our best, the second half of his advice on asking (and answering) the tough questions of ourselves is spot on. Here are at least 11 sets of challenging questions that only you can ask and answer for yourself:
Our world of work is filled with quick sound-bite exchanges and constant interruptions. Many of us have learned to cope with competing stimuli and the pressure to move faster and faster in our daily transactions, yet there is a cost to working this way...
This is an annual post at Management Excellence, offered in the spirit of the Thanksgiving holiday here in the U.S. It's a nice time for leaders to pause and recognize the many reasons they have to be thankful for the privilege of serving.
