Lead yourself to lead others
Neuroscience of Innovation
4 Ekim 2019
Gartner 2020 trends and thoughts on this
6 Kasım 2019
“If you leave us our money, our buildings, and our brands, but take away our people, the Company will fail. But if you take away our money, our buildings, and our brands, but leave us our people, we can rebuild the whole thing in a decade.”
This memorable quote from Richard Redwood Deupree, former CEO of P&G (1948-1959) reminds two solid facts. One of them is the success for nearly two centuries never spells the word ‘chance’; the other one is that human resource means an incomparable value for any company.
This article will focus mostly on the second one and the essential quality of leadership on how to make it better and useful for each stakeholder.
In my experience, anyone -if not having a psychological problem- would naturally do their best and enjoy the time they spend in the duties, companies they occupy. Most critical factors to be successful are not more than an average IQ, a pairing job suitable with the abilities and a worthy context to show people themselves.
The most challenging part of every new assignment for me has been to understand and create a common ground with the team already doing their roles. Expectations, biases, skill sets and anything that would affect the result should be checked and rearrange in another way to push it further.
Having said that, it is(was, will be) never easy to find a balance between the pressures of the board, investors, short term financial expectations and the most important stakeholder, human resources, who really can deliver the results.
So here is the magic factor; commonly and sometimes overspoken but rarely found; contextual leadership.
In his influential study, Daniel Goleman summarised the concept as ‘Leadership that Gets Results’ as follows;
This memorable quote from Richard Redwood Deupree, former CEO of P&G (1948-1959) reminds two solid facts. One of them is the success for nearly two centuries never spells the word ‘chance’; the other one is that human resource means an incomparable value for any company.
This article will focus mostly on the second one and the essential quality of leadership on how to make it better and useful for each stakeholder.
In my experience, anyone -if not having a psychological problem- would naturally do their best and enjoy the time they spend in the duties, companies they occupy. Most critical factors to be successful are not more than an average IQ, a pairing job suitable with the abilities and a worthy context to show people themselves.
The most challenging part of every new assignment for me has been to understand and create a common ground with the team already doing their roles. Expectations, biases, skill sets and anything that would affect the result should be checked and rearrange in another way to push it further.
Having said that, it is(was, will be) never easy to find a balance between the pressures of the board, investors, short term financial expectations and the most important stakeholder, human resources, who really can deliver the results.
So here is the magic factor; commonly and sometimes overspoken but rarely found; contextual leadership.
In his influential study, Daniel Goleman summarised the concept as ‘Leadership that Gets Results’ as follows;
‘Managers often fail to appreciate how profoundly the organisational climate can influence financial results. It can account for nearly a third of business performance. Organisational climate, in turn, is controlled by leadership style—by the way that managers motivate direct reports, gather and use information, make decisions, manage change initiatives, and handle crises.’
On this Dilbert cartoon, there are two critical points I can identify; one is already well handled, ‘manage your manager’, but the other one is leadership style. Close supervision and commanding each and every step, especially with the people who already know their role better than anyone is just poison in the organisational climate.
Unsurprisingly, when people are assigned to leading positions, most of the time, they were not trained how to drive. The best thing they can do is to repeat what made them successful, which is quite far away than what is expected. ‘Do what I say’ till the heat of the team increases then make friendly touches to turn the heat down.
In my opinion, the companies who are continually focusing on developing their leaders for evaluating circumstances and their people at their best capacity are using this as a winning edge over their competitors.
Context is the keyword here, as such, if there is a crisis, no one can afford to act democratic or visionary style. As fast as possible, the fire should be put out, either by the leader or the best worker who knows the issue in command.
However, leaders should be very cautious in this commandment style if their team is already highly skilled and experienced. Instead, they should spend time and energy to create a climate to let them show their self-esteem, creativity. The democratic and visionary style will be the most suitable to tap all the potential with the companies’ targets, as long as the leader be alert about the endless meetings and unfinished discussions.
Just at the same division, if the team has full of learners, then the leader should be coaching and setting the tempo in people to bring the best out of them, democracy wouldn’t help them till they have enough experience to contribute.
As a summary, there is no easy way out. The best way to deliver the results is to engage your people to the company objectives through leadership skills. These skills can be acquired by experiencing and showing the continuous effort to evaluate the context, present abilities, ambitions and creativity of people and managing/developing them accordingly to make them pride and feel useful for what they do.
Unsurprisingly, when people are assigned to leading positions, most of the time, they were not trained how to drive. The best thing they can do is to repeat what made them successful, which is quite far away than what is expected. ‘Do what I say’ till the heat of the team increases then make friendly touches to turn the heat down.
In my opinion, the companies who are continually focusing on developing their leaders for evaluating circumstances and their people at their best capacity are using this as a winning edge over their competitors.
Context is the keyword here, as such, if there is a crisis, no one can afford to act democratic or visionary style. As fast as possible, the fire should be put out, either by the leader or the best worker who knows the issue in command.
However, leaders should be very cautious in this commandment style if their team is already highly skilled and experienced. Instead, they should spend time and energy to create a climate to let them show their self-esteem, creativity. The democratic and visionary style will be the most suitable to tap all the potential with the companies’ targets, as long as the leader be alert about the endless meetings and unfinished discussions.
Just at the same division, if the team has full of learners, then the leader should be coaching and setting the tempo in people to bring the best out of them, democracy wouldn’t help them till they have enough experience to contribute.
As a summary, there is no easy way out. The best way to deliver the results is to engage your people to the company objectives through leadership skills. These skills can be acquired by experiencing and showing the continuous effort to evaluate the context, present abilities, ambitions and creativity of people and managing/developing them accordingly to make them pride and feel useful for what they do.