Most senior leaders lack any form of an honest, effective and timely feedback loop, and when they succumb to the pressures of the role and begin to flail, things can go bad in a hurry. You should be on the lookout for these five warning signs suggesting that it's time to hit the pause button before you suffer a leadership meltdown.
Too many firms act as their own worst enemies by sustaining rules and processes that no longer apply and that block the freedom and flexibility of employees and teams to experiment and innovate. Effective leaders and managers work daily to change or eliminate these blockers. Here's a dose of encouragement and some ideas for you to spark a healthy revolution of change in support of your team:
If you’ve ever worked incredibly hard only to have something run off the rails or just not generate the results you were after, you understand what an imbalance in the Efforts-to-Results ratio feels like. Here are some thoughts on aligning this equation in your favor:
There’s a lot of happy talk in books, on blogs and in articles about leaders and leading. Much of the writing and commentary on leadership and leading reads like a Made-for-TV script with much of the gory and dirty content left out and the outcome predictable—the good guys always win. It's disconnected from reality. What's needed is a revolution in how we as consumers of leadership evaluate and select our leaders.
What I really wanted to call this post was, “Quit Acting Like a Hyper-Rooster.” It’s much more visual, and after all, does anyone really want to look or act like a hyper-rooster? Yet, that’s exactly what too many managers act and look like, as they simultaneously strut and flit around the office or plant, moving from activity to activity, focusing on everything and nothing and making their colleagues dizzy and disoriented in the process.
Grit is a good word. It’s an even better trait. You know what grit is when you see it. It’s that grind-it-out sticktoitiveness in the face of adversity displayed by individuals long on character and short on “I can’t." Here are some of my most inspiring examples of grit:
We spend an incredible amount of time immersed in a world of our own fabrication—the world as it feels and looks and acts from inside our organization’s walls. It’s not the culture that will kill you, it’s the view. It’s time to change it. Take off the blinders and look up and out further. Extend your focal point.
There are literally dozens of opportunities every day for you to make a difference. From the fundamental act of paying focused attention to a coworker, to offering a personal morning greeting or engaging in the acts of management such as: providing encouragement or delivering respectful, constructive feedback, these simple gestures have a big impact on the people and environment.
Harvard Business School Professor, Linda Hill’s, description of context faced by everyone in a leadership role in this era: “overload, ambiguity and conflict” is spot on. It is a much more articulate labeling of what I describe as, “the leadership blender.” And it reflects the state of existence of a large percentage of leaders as they strive to do more with less, faster, and with more impact. You could not ask for three more challenging contextual sets of circumstances. Here are some thoughts in developing your "inner game of leading" to help you survive and thrive in this era of change:
For all of us operating in the relative safety of corporate walls, there's more than a few powerful lessons on leading we can gain from those operating in harm's way. The first lesson is humility.
