Effective leaders understand that the respectful use of questioning is a powerful performance enhancement tool in the workplace. A leader’s questions challenge individuals and teams to look at issues from all angles and they help uncover ideas or suggestions that require a bit more baking.
It’s an exciting time to be leading as the pendulum seems to be swinging away from a style of leading and working that minimized the value of the individual to one that emphasizes empowerment, creativity and the freedom for groups and individuals to think and act. It’s hard to imagine a future where this formula does not produce winners.
Every week represents an opportunity to improve your performance as a manager and leader. In spite of the setbacks of the prior week, the fire drills that caught you by surprise and your own lack of follow-through on your goals, every Monday offers a clean slate for you to fill. My very positive intent here is to offer you a few suggestions each week that will inspire your pursuit of continuous improvement. Enjoy and Prosper!
It takes no management skill whatsoever to spend a fortune building up clicks and it definitely takes no skill to slash budgets, cut headcount, freeze programs and hunker down and wait out the storm. It does take remarkable management courage and skill to run against the crowd and conventional wisdom by investing in strategic initiatives and talent during tough times and resisting the temptation to chase mythical fortunes during boom times.
Not surprisingly, it’s often difficult for senior executives and management teams to gain objective feedback on their individual and collective performance. I’ve worked with clients and in organizations where the management team was generally satisfied with their own performance and would give themselves high marks at a time when the employees would give them lower or even failing grades. In all cases where I’ve observed this perception gap, there was no objective, systematic means of measuring performance and perceptions in place.
Organizations and individuals march forward when they have a clear goal and sight and are driven by some deep collective conviction that when successful, the world will be a better place, that they will be better professionals and that their positions and as a result, their families will be secure. The earlier that a leader understands that creating “constancy of purpose” is a core task, the faster they are on their way to truly fulfilling their obligation and responsibility as a leader.
If you are after thought-provoking, practical content from scores of leading authorities in HR, Leadership and Management, then click-thru to the great Carnival being hosted by Kris Dunn at HR Capitalist. You won't be disappointed. Thanks to Kris for an awesome job.
Today I’d like to cover what I believe to be a disturbing management trend. In today’s world of the Balanced Scorecard, companies have never focused so much energy on alignment of results with strategy. I applaud the approach. In fact I recommend it. But sadly it seems that for some organizations, results have become the sole focal point—the only thing that matters. What they are losing touch with is the fact that results are driven, at least in most companies, but living, breathing human beings.
Leaders from the top on down in Not-For-Profits hold an unfair advantage over their erstwhile counterparts in the For-Profit world. Managers in Not-for-Profit are driven by a powerful sense of purpose that delivers meaning and context for even the most mundane of activities. As one young Not-For-Profit manager in my recent Leadership Mastery workshop indicated, "I can't imagine not having the mission to inspire and energize me everyday." My question: Can For-Profit organizations replicate the motivational and contextual power of "The Mission" through other proxies like goals, strategies, bonuses and targets all focused around competitors, financials and metrics like market-share and compound annual growth rate?
And while I'm loving the experience, I can't help but observe that the textbooks are some of the most mind-numbing, coma-inducing products ever to emerge from Gutenberg's great creation. In particular, the Management text in my Fundamentals of Management course this Spring is almost certain to drive the most interested of business majors to consider something more exciting like accounting or neurophysiology. What a shame to take a noble and exciting and complicated topic like management and wrap a bunch of dead theories in-between some interesting case studies and let that suffice for something that is supposed to teach the fundamentals of management.
