MANAGERIAL LEADERSHIP

 MANAGERIAL LEADERSHIP

It can be argued that senior executives need to manage also, certainly at or below the

general manager level it is imperative that organizations have people who are capable as

both managers and leaders. The focus of this book is on the leadership side of

managerial leadership. Without diminishing the importance of good management, the

critical need today is to enhance managers’ leadership behaviours. It is difficult to

unlearn bad habits, it takes a huge amount of emotional energy to change leadership

behaviors. Virtually all of today’s leadership gurus agree that what distinguishes

successful managers and executives from the masses are their leadership capabilities.

LOOKING OUT, BEFORE LOOKING IN:As you begin analysing your leadership effectiveness, start by looking at your

environment before you examine your internal leadership style. Only by reviewing the

situation you are in-incorporating the work environment, followers, and industry

challenges-can you best determine the leadership behaviors that would make you the

most effective.

Understanding Your Followers:

A critical part of your external analysis is to consider the dynamics of the people you will

be leading. After all, there is no leadership without followers. Their capabilities,

aspirations, personalities, and interactions with each other have direct bearing on how

they need to be led. In trying to better understand your followers, consider the following

characteristics of the individuals and the group as a whole:

• Experience in the industry.

• Experience in the organization.

• The way they were managed in the past.

• The impact of the “demographic” diversity in the group (e.g. age, gender, race and

ethnicity).

• The influence of the “psychographic” diversity in the group (e.g., lifestyles,

personality traits and family dynamics).

• Major recent life experiences.

The time invested in understanding the influence of these factors among your associates

will be well worth it as you consider your leadership options. In determining what

practices and behaviors were common among those effective managerial leaders,

Kouzes and Posner zeroed in on five competencies:

• Challenging the process.

• Inspiring a shared vision.

• Enabling others to act.

• Modeling the way.

• Encouraging the heart.

THE FORCES OF CHANGE:

I cannot think of a period in business when “change” hasn’t been an important concern.

So why is it such a hot topic in boardrooms, executive suites and management

development programmes today? Most managers describe the pace and scope of

change as the key reasons. Change today is constant. There is no stopping it and there

is no standing still. In this way, change is a relentlessly powerful force pounding on

organizations. For change, first, you had to “unfreeze” from the current status quo, move

through a short-term (orchestrated) transition period, and “refreeze” once you reached

the desired state, where you would lock in the new status quo. An analysis of the major

forces of change that are driving business today will provide a richer understanding of

how and why they impact your organization. The four principal forces include:

Ø Intense competition

Ø Demanding customers

Ø Technology

Ø Demanding shareholdersORGANIZATIONS THAT THRIVE IN CHAOS:

Most companies are struggling to cope with the barrage of constant change. Just when

the situation seems to be settling down a bit, the next wave hits and the organization

must react and make a new series of adjustments. While it seems to the associates that

their company is uniquely facing these challenges, the reality is that virtually all

organizations are caught up in this constantly reactive state.

“The question that faces the strategic decision-maker is not ’what his organization

should do tomorrow.’ It is, ‘what do we have to do today to be ready for an

uncertain tomorrow’?”

- Peter Drucker

Only those companies can thrive amidst the chaos of “change management”, who are:

v Flexible.

v Fast.

v Empowered.

v Open in its communications.

v Innovative

v Learning-oriented.

v Development-focused.

v Lean.

v Energized.

v Team-oriented.

v Performance-based.

v Value-driven.

OVERCOMING RESISTANCE:

When is the last time you experienced a major change in your personal life? Think about

what you went through emotionally during that period. Personal experience is analogous

to what happens to many people in their work environments. It is important to

understand both why people resist change and what is the likely range of behavioral

consequences of that resistance. Here is the list of reasons why resistance to change is

so prevalent in the workplace:

ü Fear of the unknown.

ü Fear of failure.

ü Not understanding the need for change.

ü Disagreement with the need for change.

ü Losing something of value.

ü Inertia.

BEING IN THE MIDDLE:

One of the most critical challenges for a managerial leader is to learn how to be a change

agent in the midst of an organization that does not truly want to change. You didn’t

create the mess that the company is in, nor are you the one determining where to go

from here. However, you are held accountable for following the new plans, whether or not you agree with them. Just like a middle child in a family of three kids, you wind up

developing skills that neither the one above you nor the one below you have to develop.

You should start with flexibility. Can you look for ways to build in flexibility as you make

business decisions? It is certainly possible to do so regarding staffing decisions. Look

for ways that you can influence the speed at which your unit responds to its customers

and market opportunities. One level of analysis would be to review your decision-making

processes. Another level of analysis worth considering is to review your assumptions

about speed to market.

Speed and flexibility can’t happen without an empowered work force. One way to

increase the power of your colleagues is to publicly recognize them for their

accomplishments. It is critically important that you create an atmosphere of open

communications throughout your unit. Nothing breeds dissension and distrust more than

communication blockades. If your associates believe you are keeping information from

them, they will assume the information is bad news. If you make it difficult for

subordinates to bring you bad news, then you lose the opportunity to solve problems

since you won’t know they exist.

LEADERSHIP COMPETENCIES:

Enabling your associates to work at their very best is at the core of managerial

leadership. Note that selection of the word enabling is purposeful – “making able;

making it possible for” – as leadership today is so much more about creating

environments where people can succeed than it is about making decisions or getting

things done individually. The critical ingredients to consider are:

q Creating an environment where associates are encouraged to learn and grow.

q Identifying the most important competencies that associates must develop.

q Providing the mechanisms for associates to develop those competencies.

q Generating individual development plans for associates based on their unique

sets of skills and deficiencies.

q Integrating development into the day-to-day activities as much as possible.

COACHING:

Executive and managerial coaching has become a big business. A number of leading

companies, have made extensive use of outside coaches for their managers. The use of

outside coaches has some distinct advantages for companies, particularly if their internal

capacity for coaching is underdeveloped. But outside coaching should not be viewed as

a substitute for the coaching role that managers must play for their direct reports. When

thinking about coaching, the image that most naturally comes to mind is an athletic

coach. Consider a set of responsibilities for the coach of a basketball team, for

example. They include:

· Analyze the competition and determine strategies to defeat them.

· Recruit, retain, and develop talent.

· Build teamwork to create synergy and optimize performance.

· Help each team member to understand his or her role(s) to contribute to team

success.

· Make sure the team and the individual players, continually improves its

performance.This formula for coaching certainly works in the business context. One significant

difference between athletic coaching and managerial coaching is the level of attention

paid to it. In the business world, the importance of the coaching role of managers is a

relatively new phenomenon. It has always been needed, but only recently have

companies begun to understand its importance. Of course, other responsibilities have

not been taken away in order to make time for coaching. Therefore, an important

challenge you face as a manager is to find the time to be an effective coach. Your job is

to achieve business results by enabling your associates to perform to their fullest

potential both as individuals and as a unit. Intuitively, we know there is a strong

connection between employee motivation and performance. Much of the research in this

area has focused more on the relationship between satisfaction and motivation – the

hypothesis being that the more satisfied the employee, the higher his or her motivation.

TEACHING:

According to the dictionary, teaching means, “to impart knowledge or skill.” It is

interesting to contrast that definition with the one for training – “to make proficient by

instruction and practice.” From the perspective of outcomes, training implies learning

a specific task or set of activities, while teaching suggests broadening one’s

understanding or expanding one’s skill set. The qualities and behaviors that outstanding

teachers were reported to demonstrate include:

v Strong content knowledge – they know their subject well.

v Passion for teaching.

v Challenged students to do their best – demanding.

v Built students’ confidence that they could learn difficult material.

v Cared for each student.

v Had the ability to teach individual students in the way that best enabled the

students to learn – did not use a one-size-fits-all teaching style.

v Demonstrated a love for learning and helping others to learn.

MENTORING:

Mentoring has become common as a term applied to an organizational context. Over the

past decade, many companies have developed formal mentoring programs to help junior

level managers learn from wise and experienced senior-level executives. One of the

major elements that impacts the mentor-protégé relationship is the degree of objectivity

the mentor brings to the interactions. By not being involved in the individual’s day-to-day

activities and lacking direct supervisory responsibilities, the mentor is unencumbered by

some key potential conflicts that would interfere with the ability to offer sound advice. An

effective mentor keeps the relationship focused solely on the needs of the protégé, not

on any of his or her own personal agendas. It is not easy to maintain a high level of

objectivity in discussing career development and organizational politics with a

subordinate. It is also difficult for the associate to feel secure in talking openly and

honestly with her manager, as she might with a mentor who was outside the work unit. A

less potentially contentious aspect of mentoring your staff members, as a managerial

leader, is to help them better understand the organization’s political landscape and how

to best navigate it. Remember, the point of mentoring is to provide advice and guidance

on career and other long-term development issues. Here are some ways in which you

can integrate mentoring into your activities:Ø Meet with your associates once or twice a year to discuss their career progress

and aspirations.

Ø Get to know your associates’ family situations and principal hobbies or community

activities.

Ø If one of your associates is struggling with a career or professional decision, let

the associate know you would be willing to offer your advice.

Ø Demonstrate empathy for the situations your associates are facing.

Ø Use storytelling from your past to describe how you learned to manage your own

career.

Ø Encourage your associates to continue to grow and develop meaningful careers

for themselves.

DEVELOPING SELF AND DEVELOPING OTHERS:

Unlearning is harder than learning, especially for adults. The behaviors people exhibit

are typically built from the experiences they have had over many years. It is quite a

challenge, first, to understand what we need to change in ourselves and, second, to do

something about it that makes a difference. Before you begin to work on helping your

associates change their leadership practices, you need to work on your own behaviors.

There is no substitute for “walking the talk” as a source of modeling and inspiration.

The important concept to recognize is that you cannot separate developing others from

developing yourself. Good coaches know they get better as a result of coaching their

players. Good teachers realize they learn as much from their students as their students

learn from them. By putting your attention into coaching, teaching and mentoring others,

you will also be developing yourself. If you find a unit that is performing well, with

motivated employees who work well together, the probability is high that a primary

reason for their success is that the unit’s manager is an effective leader.

GIVING AND RECEIVING FEEDBACK:

It is critically important that you provide the employees with open and candid feedback if

you are sincerely interested in helping them to become more successful. Most managers

have a very hard time giving constructive criticism. The problem seems to be more with

the constructive part than with the criticism. If you want to help someone develop, you

need to point out their shortcomings while providing them with a mechanism for

improvement. It is important to the entire organization that you overcome the discomfort

and provide candid feedback to your associates. The communication skills required for

doing so may seem basic but are really quite refined. In providing constructive feedback

you are truly helping associates have the opportunity to perform at a high level. It is good

for their development. It is good for the organization’s performance. It is also good for

your development and leadership effectiveness.

Here are some of the principal elements for giving comprehensive feedback to an

associate, especially if the feedback is in the form of constructive criticism.

§ Find a location to meet that is nonthreatening and conducive to an informal

discussion.

§ State the purpose of the meeting.

§ Begin by stressing the positive.

§ When you are getting into the areas of poor performance, be sure to separate the

person from the problem.§ Ask the associate to provide his or her perspective on the situation.

§ Be sure to listen well. You may learn something about the situation you did not

know.

§ Summarize what you have heard and then offer your perspective on the matter.

§ Specially address the behavior or competency area that you want to see

improved.

§ Set tangible milestones or accomplishments.

§ Create a mutually agreed-upon action plan.

§ End the conversation on a positive, not punitive, note. If you are serious in your

desire to see improvement, you need to show confidence that the individual can,

in fact, make that improvement.

How feedback is received is as important as how it is given. There is another set of skills

associated with effectively receiving feedback. Industrial psychologists and

organizational development specialists will all tell you that “RECEIVING FEEDBACK IS

A GIFT, YOU SHOULD CHERISH IT.” Sometimes it sure doesn’t feel like much of a gift,

and since you don’t get a receipt, it’s hard to take it back to the store and exchange it for

something else. But you do need to find out how others perceive your behaviors or if you

are doing anything incorrectly without realizing it. In an ideal communications world, this

would not be an issue, as individuals within the organization would be giving and

receiving feedback constantly. However, there is no ideal communication world of which

I am aware. Most corporate cultures reflect a lack of candor and openness in

interpersonal interactions. Poor internal communications is among the most common

problems identified in employee surveys addressing morale and job satisfaction. As with

giving feedback, there are ways to enhance your ability to receive feedback effectively as

well. Remind yourself to:

ü Avoid getting defensive.

ü Listen carefully.

ü Ask questions for clarification, if needed, but avoid asking questions that would

attack the credibility of the source.

ü Thank the sender for giving you the feedback, even if you don’t like what was

said.

The way in which you receive feedback today will have a significant influence over the

frequency and type of feedback you get tomorrow. This is especially true for

subordinates. They will learn quickly how open you are to constructive criticism. If you

want to hear their opinions and perceptions, then you need to create an atmosphere in

the office that is conducive to their giving you feed-back.

MANAGING UP AND ACROSS:

Managerial leadership is inherently multidimensional. As a manager in the middle of an

organization, in addition to the obvious leadership challenges associated with managing

others, there are also challenges of interacting with the executives above and peers

across the company. Expressing the importance of establishing a positive working

relationship with your manager is not overstating the obvious. Here are some of the tips I

have learned from others as well as from my own experiences:

v Gain congruence over what you are to accomplish.

v Communicate, communicate, and communicate.

v Tailor your communication to suit your manager’s style.

v Learn how your manager is being managed.v Solicit informal feedback.

v Be sure to bring bad news to the boss.

v Bring a solution.

v Do not speak ill of your colleagues.

v Be positive.

v Be careful.

v Maintain your perspective.

Of all the managerial directions, the horizontal (or perhaps diagonal) linkages are the

ones that are most often ignored. You have to attend to managing your people (down),

and at some point you learn that you should try to manage the relationship with your boss

(up). So, with everything you must attend to, why should you worry about your

relationships across the enterprise at the peer or colleague level?

Answer: Because, increasingly, you have to build your internal network in order to be

effective in performing your responsibilities. And it is in the best interest of your

organization that these relationships and informal communication pathways get

developed.

MANAGING ACROSS BORDERS AND CULTURES:

It is not unusual for a manager who is southern, working with a company headquartered

in the northeast. If we have this level of difficulty domestically with regard to cross-cultural

interactions, imagine what challenges are present for companies that operate across

borders and continents. There are many ways to look at cultural differences in an

organizational context. The individual’s orientation to the world is an important

component in determining how that person will view other cultures. In my work with

transnational organizations, I have found other factors that are worth considering in

analyzing cultural differences. These include:

· People’s relationship with nature.

· Assumptions of humans being inherently good or evil.

· Temporal orientation: past, present and future.

· Personal and family relationships

· Spatial orientation: physical closeness and the need for privacy.

Cross-cultural sensitivity is a critical quality for managerial leadership today. There are

seven “mental disciplines” that are important in the development of geocentric

managers – those individuals who can work effectively across cultures in a global

context. These disciplines apply equally as well to managing diversity in domestic

settings:

Ø Observe without judgment.

Ø Tolerate ambiguity.

Ø Practice style shifting.

Ø Flip your perception.

Ø Reprogram your questions.

Ø Work interdependently.

Ø Keep mental stability and growth.

PUTTING YOUR PLAN INTO ACTION:My congratulations to you, as you must be somewhat motivated to make some

behavioral changes in order to enhance your leadership effectiveness. You undoubtedly

realize that no matter how skilled you are currently, your leadership practices can always

be improved and refined. Perhaps you began, as many others do, by asking yourself

these three questions:

q Can you do it?

q Will you do it?

q Is it worth it?

The critical question to ask is “how” to affect a positive change in your leadership

practices. Most of us need some structure in taking on a challenge as important as this

one. It is simpler to work from a good model than to create our own. The 10-step

approach described below is the most common framework I use in working with

managers on their leadership development plans. It is offered as a way for you to get

started. Adapt it to fit your needs and your style.

1. The first, and most important, step is to make the commitment to move forward in

developing your leadership effectiveness.

2. Remember to carefully consider your current situational context.

3. Collect some data on how others perceive your leadership effectiveness, and be

sure to include tools that provide the opportunity for self-assessment.

4. Draw upon the resources available to you within your organization.

5. Identify your leadership strengths.

6. Determine the areas in which there are major differences in opinion about your

leadership practices.

7. Create your development action plan by identifying two to three areas for

improvement initially.

8. In identifying these developmental areas, visualize the new behaviors you will

exhibit when you are successful.

9. Go public with your action plan.

10.Keep your action plan alive.

Remember that this is a journey – one that will last a lifetime.