Tag Archives: effective leadership

03-Planning the work of a team, 04-Managing a project team, 07a-Crafting an effective formal presentation, 07c-Telling stories, 99-Applying business intelligence, team dynamics, team roles

Are you a Leader or a Manager?

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I took a class in undergrad about “Servant Leadership” by Robert Greenleaf. I started questioning the difference between a manager and a leader, and have been intrigued by the concept ever since. As I was interviewing for my current position, I was questioned as to what type of leader I would be in the organization.

I pondered, and proceeded to explain the type of manager I would be and the skills that I would bring to the table. I described that I did not feel that someone could place me in the role of “leader”. It was a position that others saw me as based on how they felt about my abilities. They would make the decision to follow, I could not decide that for them.

I stumbled upon this article in the Wall Street Journal regarding this very topic. It discusses the importance of differentiating between a manager and a leader as the concept of the knowledge worker becomes more profound in our society.

“The leader originates, the leader challenges, the leader is an individual, the leader focuses on people.”

Take a look at the article and see how your natural characteristics fall into the spectrum. I believe that leadership is a way of life. It’s a characteristic that exudes from you, both in the professional world and your personal life. Leaders are the people that I select as mentors. The fact that I have placed them in that position in my life re-iterates how I feel about their ability to lead and challenge me.

My father is a mouthy, Italian businessman with salt and pepper hair. He has drowned me in the business world from a very young age. Along the way, I have gathered a few Tony-isms from him about this matter:

“You can promote people and make them managers, but you cannot make them leaders. That trait is who you are. When it comes out, people will know.”

“The person who knows how and why will always have a leg up on the person who only knows how or why.”

He’s a deep fellow.

Decide the type of position you want to hold in the lives of your co-workers, and work towards being looked at in that light. These abilities will alter the way you present, the way you communicate, and the way you analyze situations.

I leave you with one final Tony-ism: “Be cautious not to take too much advice.”

Christine

04-Managing a project team, feedback, team dynamics

Keeping Your Team Engaged

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If there is anything that I have learned during my career thus far it is that change is constant. Over the past ten months, my team has undergone two monumental restructures. Although I believe that both of these changes have been for the best, the change itself was not easy.

While recently reviewing “Leadership Sustainability” by Dave Ulrich, I came across several key takeaways that are simple yet very powerful. Even though I didn’t have this content as I went in to the recent restructures, I realized that the process that my team was following was very similar to several of the key principles identified in the book. However, there is one that we haven’t quite mastered as well as the others.

The book identifies five rules of the Leadership Code:

  1. Shape the future
  2. Make things happen
  3. Engage today’s talent
  4. Build the next generation
  5. Invest in yourself

They sound simple enough, right? I thought so, too.

Throughout the organizational changes that we’ve recently undergone, I’ve found that keeping my team engaged is proving to be harder than I initially anticipated. Through a series of meetings, surveys and conversations, I have identified a few areas that I believe are at the root of the issue.

The first area that I’ve identified is a strong sense of community. Even though the majority of my team does have a strong sense of community, for some, that community factor is missing. For these few individuals, they remain distant and do not take initiative to interact with other members of the team besides the required interactions for various projects that they are working on.

The second area that stands out is recognition. Each individual craves different forms of recognition and several members of my team were looking for additional recognition. I’ve found that complements and encouragement is one of the easiest ways to boost a team member’s confidence. However, for some, they feel most rewarded when they are recognized for their work in front of others. Therefore, I’ve been intentional lately to try to recognize people using a combination of the two. I’ve noticed that team members really appreciate this and will take action to try to remain in the spotlight when they know that they will be recognizing for their efforts.

The third area that my team struggles with from time to time is cultural differences. Our company has a very strong corporate culture that is conservative in nature. However, many members of our team have beliefs that differ from the cultural norms. I highly value these differences in thought and encourage members to always be themselves. However, that is much easier said than done and team members can easily become disengaged when the culture doesn’t align well with their own views.

I’m curious to know if other organizations struggle with keeping their teams engaged in the company and the work that they’re doing. If so, is it for similar reasons that I’ve described and what ways have you discovered that work well for keeping them better engaged?

team dynamics

People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.

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Business success can be defined in many ways – achievement of a firm’s goals and vision, cost reduction, successful strategy implementation, meeting revenue goals, etc. Firm-wide, team based, or individual, not matter your goals or desired outcome, a key success factor is one’s ability to build strong relationships with colleagues, managers, clients and often competitors.

Ed Wallace’s Business Relationships that Last: 5 Steps for Transforming Contacts into High-Performing Relationships proposes that every relationship is built on a foundation of three essential qualities – Credibility, Integrity, and Authenticity.

  • Credibility – the quality that makes other believe in you, your words, and your actions
  • Integrity – being trustworthy in our actions and character
  • Authenticity – being truly genuine and honest with our clients about who we are and what we know

Each aligns with a core tenant and value of the EvMBA program – each difficult to teach or develop in any student (or employee). Each quality requires a level of self-awareness and reflection that can be easily lost in the core or elective MBA curriculum of finance, statistical modeling or product and brand management.

Wallace provides a framework for developing high-impact relationships and introduces a number of activities to spark your thinking about who your key relationships are, what “blockers” are currently holding you back, and actions to take to strengthen your key relationships in a proactive way.

It’s a good and quick read. (Maybe a good one for August, as it’s ~200 pages cover to cover)

Would love to hear your ideas (and actions) on how you build and develop relationships with key stakeholders, colleagues and acquaintances.

04-Managing a project team, feedback, team dynamics

You Can’t Be a Great Manager If You’re Not a Good Coach

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In a recent blog post on hbr.org, Professor Monique Valcour presents a powerful suggestion for managers to connect with and get the most out of employees. She argues that “if your job involves leading others, the implications are clear: the most important thing you can do each day is to help your team members experience progress at meaningful work.”

So how do you know what is meaningful to them? By developing a coaching relationship and having coaching conversations. These conversations will allow managers to understand what drives each person, help build connections between each person’s work and the organization’s mission and strategic objectives, provide timely feedback, and help each person learn and grow on an ongoing basis. The goal is to develop the employee, just as the goal of a pitching coach is to develop his pitchers.

To do so, she lays out 5 tactics for managers.

  1. Listen deeply. Listen with your full attention, and create a high-quality connection that invites your team member to open up and to think creatively.
  2. Ask, don’t tell. In a coaching conversation, it’s essential to restrain your impulse to provide the answers. Your path is not your employee’s path.   Similar to the Socratic method,  open-ended questions, not answers, are the tools of coaching.
  3. Create and sustain a developmental alliance.  Follow-up is critical to build trust and to make your coaching more effective. The more you follow through on supporting your employees’ developmental plans, the more productive your coaching becomes, the greater your employees’ trust in you, and the more engaged you all become. It’s a virtuous cycle.
  4. Focus on moving forward positively. Similar to Professor Smith’s recommendation to have a 5:1 positive to negative feedback ratio, the reverse is true here — when an employee focuses on the negatives during coaching conversations, it’s the job of the manager to end the venting session and steer the discussion into a positive, solution-based dialogue.  You might ask, “Which of the activities you mention offer the greatest potential for building your knowledge and adding value to the company?” “Could you schedule two hours of time for developmental activities each week as a recurring appointment?” “Are there skills or relationships that would increase your ability to meet your primary deliverables?” “How could we work more efficiently within the team to free up and protect time for development?”
  5. Build accountability.  In addition to making sure you follow through on any commitments you make to employees in coaching conversations, it’s also useful to build accountability for the employee’s side of formulating and implementing developmental plans. Accountability increases the positive impact of coaching conversations and solidifies their rightful place as keys to organizational effectiveness.

I wanted to share this article because viewing management through a coaching lens resonates with me. To this day, I deeply appreciate and have nothing but fond thoughts towards my high school athletic coaches — they took a genuine interest in developing me as an athlete and as a person. I’ve yet to have a manager take this same kind of interest my own development, but I imagine my response to that kind of attention would be to make my time at work more meaningful and encourage me to do more meaningful work.

04-Managing a project team, team dynamics

5 tips on how to be an effective manager

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When I came across this article on Linked-In, I was surprised by the jarring title, but appreciated the simplicity of it. Many of us have been there—had a manager that we couldn’t believe was allowed to be in a position of leading a team and thought to ourselves that if we were in their position, we would handle things so differently. Ken Sanderson, a management consultant at Swift Wind Knowledge group, recently  took a close look a management skills and identified 5 elements that we should consider in order to be a good manager.
I thought these were all pretty spot-on, but would offer up a few others as well. For example, I think it’s very important for managers to be strong communicators and  not be afraid to engage in conflict resolution. Additionally, I think it’s also very important to  establish creditability with their employees. Although managers might have the illustrious title, it’s important for them to show that they can deliver results and actually execute projects.
Do you agree with Ken’s list below? What are some other skills that you would include?

1. First and foremost – don’t be a jerk.
Treat Everyone, from cleaning staff through to executives, with utmost respect. Too many people get a position of “authority” and suddenly look down on other staff who are “lower” in the hierarchy. Not only is this wrong on a human level, it is also a serious strategic error. You have no idea what there connections may be, what influence they may have, or where they may end up being in the next year.

It also means that you should not sabotage “rivals”, step on people’s heads to advance, steal credit (or even worry about who gets credit at all), or stab people in the back. Unless you are a pirate, none of these tactics are helpful to a career or a healthy workplace.

2. Be present

You expect your employees to show up for work and put their time and energy in – so should you. Managers that demand 100% from their employees, but then turn around and take extended lunches or go “networking” on the golf course are not only insulting, they are grossly underproductive to their own organization.

Employees are not stupid. When they see this type of inconsistency, they become disengaged. Suddenly, their own contributions to the organization mandate begins to lose its meaning as well as their sense of being appreciated.

Being present is also more than just being in the office. It means being there for your employees. My office door is never closed except for when an employee needs to have a private discussion. A manager’s primary responsibility is to guide and support their staff; thus, the manager must be available to them.

3. Lead by Inspiration, not fear

Antiquated notions of an aggressive leader striking fear and awe into his/her employees are just that… antiquated. They never achieved anything more than obedience and compliance. Staff under that type of leadership did their hours and the minimum required to comply with their duties. Such workplaces never achieve greatness, nor any true productivity.

A good manager leads, instead, by inspiration. To do this a manager needs to include staff in planning, sincerely consider staff ideas and opinions, and help staff see how their contributions connect to the greater picture of the organization’s mandate and directions. They need to see how they are meaningful to the organization.

Might there be performance issues at some point? perhaps, but then that is what performance management systems are for. However, in my experience, engaged employees tend to put in extra time rather than sluff off.

4. Be Open

Managers often think that they are doing staff a favour by holding back certain information (for example, there may be contemplation by senior management about reorganizing a specific team of staff). This could not be further from the truth. Staff ALWAYS find out about considerations or plans – but without you discussing it with them, they are left with wild speculation and fear.

A good manager understands that he/she has a TEAM he/she is managing, not children to coddle. When they know that you communicate with them and that you are there to support them in whatever way possible, you drive up engagement and the true sense of a team.

5. Manage, don’t micromanage!

Far too many managers think they are geniuses. Let’s face the facts here, if you are a manager, you are NOT a genius. You are no smarter than the people you are managing – you just have a different set of skills.

It is the mistaken belief by a poor manager, that they are smarter than their staff. This belief causes many to interfere with the work that should be assigned to their staff. Even worse are those who may have been the best widget maker previously. They have a tendency to interfere all the time – believing that everyone should operate exactly how they did and achieve exactly the same level of results they did.

All of these notions are wrong. First, it is no longer the role of a manager to do all the work. They are supposed to be guiding their staff, supporting them and taking on the tasks of planning. If they are busy doing their staff’s work, they have no time for the actual work they are hired for.

Furthermore, many of these managers have no trust in their employees and so they either criticize unceasingly their staff’s work or do it themselves. To be a good manager, you need to trust your employees and their skills. Give them the tasks to do, let them find their own most productive way of doing it and support them training or whatever else they may need help them gain more and better skill sets.

One caveat to all of this is that you need to get to know your employees and their characters. Some will thrive better under slightly more supervision while others may thrive better under minimal supervision. You need to understand these character differences in order to provide the best management possible for staff to succeed.

Regardless of how much or how little supervision an employee will thrive under, manager’s should not be taking over their work. Nor should managers pretend to know everything their staff knows. Seek out their opinions on issues, involve them in planning or decision making – let them know that you value their expertise. You may not always opt for their recommended decision, but at least you are showing them that you value them enough to seriously consider it.

Link to article

 

04-Managing a project team, team dynamics, team roles

Listen, Learn and then Lead

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2) Planning the Work of a Team, 3) Managing a Project Team

http://www.ted.com/speakers/stanley_mcchrystal

So I openly admit bias on my inspirational and informative reference (but in fairness most of my other Military Officer vets have incredible admiration for the guy). The former commander of US and ISAF forces in Afghanistan, General Stanly McChrystal, gave an incredible lecture via TED that is applicable to anyone wishing to take on a leadership role in a not just challenging environment but seek to implement transformational changes to said organization. As with many of my peers, I too have been in (and will seek post-MBA) leadership positions that have entirely different duties and responsibilities than my previous roles. From the transition from a Platoon Leader as a Second Lieutenant in a Sapper Platoon (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hp5LqGCtzYI ) to my other less interesting (and more plans-oriented) positions I realized that there are certain traits that make leaders excel in any field or organization that they are placed in.

One of the common themes at the US Army Officer Candidate School is leadership is leadership: irrespective of your specialty or organizational level responsibility. It has taken years for me to develop (and am still learning in the corporate world now) but the key traits I have observed and am now especially cognizant of are best summed up by General McChrystal:

Listen, Learn and then Lead.

Reflecting on all the skills one learns during his or her MBA experience I believe it to be equally important to understand how to implement your ideas to fully utilize lessons learned from classes such as Management Practice. In the course of leading often skeptical clients or coworkers (or Soldiers and civilians in the General’s case), McChrystal suggests to first listen. Listening is quite possibly the most difficult task leaders have, particularly as we are prone to defaulting to preconceived notions on how the role and responsibilities should play out before we even arrive; this is especially difficult when compounded with issues such as generational differences, prior experiences and job diversity. Throughout the learning phase (continuous) the main goal is to build trust and rapport; people tend to work harder and with more conviction when they believe someone has their best interest in mind; this is particularly true when it comes to leading higher risk maneuvers or actions where the natural tendency is risk-aversion to prevent failure / negative performance reviews. Finally there is learning when to fully lead. “When in charge be in charge” is one of the idioms always taught to military officers; when you have demonstrated the listening and learning traits to your group this becomes significantly easier to execute. I have found these leadership maxims to be of extreme value regardless of leading Soldiers in warzones or my peers when implementing a new sales strategy as a novice to seasoned sales representatives.

The “Listen, learn and lead” design is paramount to a leader’s success, particularly of importance when leading teams with informational and generational differences.

03-Planning the work of a team, 04-Managing a project team

Transitioning from Management to Leadership

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I read an article this morning on HBR by Vineet Nayar that briefly outlined three ways any manager can improve, and all of them are based on the concept that to “manage” is to do a disservice — you’re much better off leading.

Though my MP path of self-improvement is about how to better “manage a project team”, it’s safe to say that we’ve all entered Goizueta with a goal to become improved leaders rather than improved managers.

What are a few differences? Vineet Nayar provides a 3-step litmus test.

1)  Do you count value or do you create value?
A manager counts value and holds rigid milestones while a leader might instead create  a team dynamic that will hit those milestones on its own. One of the commenters likened this to someone who is sick taking some pills to resolve the issue, versus someone eating right, resting, and exercising, thus staying well.

2) Do you present a circle of influence or a circle of power?
This goes into the article I posted a few weeks back about the importance of trust in leadership. Wielding power is a negative trait, but being that person who others come to for advice or encouragement is an indicator of leadership. The author only mentions how one can recognize their leadership in this point, but doesn’t recommend how to position oneself. Any thoughts here?

3) Do you manage work or do you lead people?
This relates to oversight (managing) and influencing by working alongside those in the trenches.

All in all, it seems that both are necessary, but influence and leadership are more proactive approaches to problems. Management is more reactive. The three litmus questions are overlapping and somewhat redundant, but I like the underlying point. What Vineet never says is that both management and leadership are necessary, but I’m not sure if he agrees with that.

As a general rule, after reading an article, avoid the comments section. Except in HBR.

I broke this rule and read a different take on Leadership vs Management dichotomy by “John R. Shultz”:

Leadership and management are not opposites, but two sides of the same coin. And as a coin, there is value that buys quite a lot. Flip it, and you can’t lose. It’s a win-win toss-up. Each side, when skills are sufficient, will produce outcomes that are beneficial to the enterprise and its stakeholders alike.

There are distinctions between leadership and management. Each position has its own characteristics and functional activities, but these activities are related and complementary arrangements for coordinating, controlling, and advancing organizational operations. Leaders typically envision and managers implement. But that doesn’t mean that managers aren’t capable leaders. In many cases managers have to be leaders as well as coordinators and controllers of complex transactions.

Management is an organizational construct. It exists because large public and private sector enterprises would find their existence—because of the many inputs and multifaceted process interactions—difficult if not impossible without such oversight. Accordingly, management is all about dealing with complex operations. These are practices and procedures concerned with planning, organizing, staffing, controlling and then problem solving so activities function at some kind of optimal level. Management is concerned with the immediate, the day-to-day activities, and making sure organizational transactions are completed efficiently and effectively.

Leadership, on the other hand, is about the long-term, staying relevant, and coping with changing economic and social-political forces. These include: competition, unstable markets, ability to finance short-term obligations, overcapacity, an inefficient supply chain, an underperforming workforce, and the constant pressure by stockholders for higher and higher returns. Consequently what worked today will not necessarily work tomorrow. The need to adapt and change becomes a necessity for survival and growth. Leadership at its core is about finding opportunity and then making a case for constant renewal.

Yes, managers and leaders do have different responsibilities, but their roles are not exclusive. They are joined in a mutual and beneficial relationship where leaders rally people to a cause—to a purpose—and managers’ make it all work. This however, doesn’t mean that managers and supervisors are not sufficiently expert to be leaders. Quite the opposite, these individuals are leaders at their own level and often urge fellow employees to the finish line while producing noticeable results. Being resourceful and skillful, in most cases, they ably set direction, align people, and inspire as well as deal with the mundane and the nitty-gritty. This is a symbiotic association that, in most modern enterprises, is difficult to differentiate as separate and distinct individual activities.

Which point of view do you find speaks more to you?

 

Original article here: http://blogs.hbr.org/2013/08/tests-of-a-leadership-transiti/

03-Planning the work of a team, 04-Managing a project team, work plans

Managing Your Time Effectively

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We all know how difficult it can be juggling school, our jobs, friends, family and goodness knows what else. Sometimes it seems like we’re burning the candles on both ends, and we just can’t seem to catch up no matter WHAT we do. It’s so easy to get distracted, especially with all the electronic devices filling up our lives, whether it’s the TV or your smartphone.

I’ve often observed this with managers and co-workers as well. They get so caught up with the little things,  it can be difficult to stay on track.  Projects then get pushed back, things pile up — and then they end up spending 12-14 hours a day working 6 days a week. Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg talks about trying to balance family and work in her book “Lean In”.  When she first became an executive at Google, She said she constantly felt worried about missing something – if she was at home with her family, she was concerned about things at the office, and vice versa.  So she implemented a pretty similar policy outlined in Michael McKeown’s article The No. 1 Time Management Mistake. She cut out the non-essentials — whether that was extra meetings, phone calls, etc. She kept strict office hours, but made herself available, if needed, on her BlackBerry. She prioritized to-do list every day — and her employees soon followed. Soon, her team was completing projects more efficiently – and in less time.

I think these lessons are especially key for us as students and future managers. Learning how to focus on the essentials and eliminating distractions will help our stress levels and our work flow. And having effective time management seems particularly essential in this shortened summer semester! So how do you make time for school, work and your personal life?