What are the small details that make a leader so great?
Ask people what makes a great leader and you will get a myriad of different answers. We have all been inspired by different leaders and our own belief systems and personalities means we will never reach consensus on what is a highly subjective matter. Of course there are hundreds of books and academic references on great leadership but is there value in just considering our own views and developing our own systems?
Developing your own Leadership System
A good exercise to run in an organisation is a Leadership Values Platform. Participants are asked to write on a set of cards, traits which they consider make a great leader. These might include: “A great leader must stop at nothing to win”, “Great leadership focuses on employees then clients” or “Leadership is a lifestyle”. These cards are collected together and a participant chooses one at random. This statement is read aloud and the speaker states whether they agree or disagree and more importantly states their reason why. This presents for us the first part of a subjective understanding of leadership. For example the statement, “A great leader must stop at nothing to win” could have one response of “I agree, as leaders want to win, they need to win to stay on top and must do everything in their power to win or they will be left behind”. The second part of this exercise now comes into play as the other participants are allowed to challenge the response. One challenge could be, “Well I disagree, if a leader is so focused on winning all the time they neglect their team, the vision of the company and how they should be taking the company to the next level.” These challenges continue with levels of agreeing and disagreeing. The beauty of this exercise is that everyone gets to put forward their views and the rest must listen. Through this we have a great deal of opinions and ideas, which are all based on experience and beliefs. This allows all concerned to see a different viewpoint on perceptions of leadership and gain a greater insight and understanding on what are the critical success factors contributing to great leadership. From this the team can create their own traits of great leadership, document it and have it as a roadmap for leadership development, which is company specific and employee driven.
Accurate assessment of Leadership at different Level
Next comes the need to benchmark these subjective ideas against the academic and scientific data available. A great tool is to run a leadership assessment and there are many in the market to choose from. An important criteria to consider is an assessment which details traits in relation to interpersonal, achievement and leadership skills. Now match the subjective output from the previous exercise and see where it fits into the traits highlighted. This enables your team to benchmark their perceptions and tweak the roadmap to stay in line with current trends. Some leadership assessment models highlight interpersonal traits of opinions, self-esteem and power. Now revisit the subjective opinions on this and align the roadmap to bring it in line with current trends. By knowing where you measure up against the great leaders the assessments are based on, will enable you and your team to make the necessary behavioural changes and support each other in the development process.
Changing mindset on leadership
Changing mindset can be achieved by first focusing on what you do well currently regarding your leadership skills. Brainstorm what you feel you have to offer in terms of motivating and giving recognition to others. Then use this list to think about how you can make this even better. This is easier to achieve as you have promoted a positive mindset by focusing first on your current successes. This opens your mind to considering how you can make it even better. Now start designing how you can achieve this and consider the role that motivation and recognition has to play as you take small steps to great leadership:
Motivating others
The key to motivation lies in getting your team excited and enthusiastic about reaching their goals. If you have discovered their needs and unlocked their potential for development, then sustaining their motivation will be a rewarding and fruitful journey. Possessing a highly motivated team will inspire others and ensure that your company becomes an employer of choice. If their position allows, then challenge them to take initiative so they can discover what is necessary to be achieved and how they can be motivated to do this on their own.
Motivation can be kept alive through visual representations of how employees are reaching their goals. Charts and target boards are good examples but challenge them to produce their own incentives; and come good on them when they succeed. Don’t let them get so carried away that it becomes a distraction; rather assist their focus so they are shrewd about achieving those goals in a realistic time frame. By striving to reach that incentive, your team are eager to stay with you and stay motivated longer. Motivation provides inspiration to others and improves quality of life, while building your presence as a great leader.
Providing recognition
Most people leave their jobs not because they weren’t getting paid enough but because they had a problem with their manager or leader. One case to highlight is that of a marketing manager in a major investment company. She was continually complaining about her boss and what she felt was a lack of vision and direction being set by the leadership. This complaining went on for weeks and was beginning to affect the morale of her team; while the marketing manager herself was making it clear she was looking for another job. There was a dramatic change one afternoon when the managing director took it upon himself to go to her office for a chat. Once there he related how much he and the other managers valued her excellent work, the time she put in and the results she and her team were generating for the company. The marketing manager’s response was a complete reversal of what she had previously been venting. At the core of her frustration was the desire to be recognised for her talents. Her wanting to leave had been rectified in just five minutes by the boss taking time to recognise the value that particular person brought to the company. A leader never underestimate how valuable it is to take time out and give an employee positive acknowledgement in appreciation of their abilities and strengths.
Role playing to build relationships and enhance leadership
Role plays are frequently used in leadership training, which gives the opportunity to practice getting it right before going into the field for real. However the challenge with using role plays is they tend to make us switch into performance mode and everything can feel quite staged. In the feedback sections, where the observations and key learning is highlighted, most report that while they behaved that way in the role play they reckon they wouldn’t have performed the same way in a real situation. Does this mean that role play as an experiential tool is redundant? Well maybe just a little adjustment is needed.
A fresh approach is to have the leaders report company specific scenarios they have been involved in and use these for the team moving up the leadership ladder. Using the participants to play the characters creates challenges in creating a real situation. For starters it is highly likely the participants know each other and find it difficult to believe the other person is in fact the disgruntled employee or under performing subordinate, they are supposed to be leading. They can manipulate this to their advantage and consider the scenario as fake and therefore not worthy of taking it seriously. Combat this immediately by hiring actors to play the employees and subordinates. If the company is big enough don’t even tell the participants that you are using actors. The actors can’t be manipulated and can bring realism and real emotions to the role play situations. They can give objective feedback and leave your participants with real, tangible developmental pointers which they take seriously and won’t forget easily.
Keep progressing
We hear a lot about born leaders but maybe what this is suggesting is to be natural in our leadership style. We all have different personalities and this does not need to change as we progress to great leadership. What does need development and support is behavioural changes to make our own brand of leadership effective. By observing and listening to others we get our subjective understanding and assessments give us the hard data support the necessary behavioural changes. The positive mindset enables these changes and a few practice sessions with actors in a real play situation helps us observe these changes taking effect. Have fun with the process as you embark on this journey and continue to review and enhance your subjective understanding to support small changes towards great leadership.
David Simpson, director
Team Building Asia
www.teambuildingasia.com
CASE STUDY: Philips
Electronics company Philips recently engaged Team Building Asia for their series of Synergy Leadership Workshops in Singapore.
Creating mindset change was the first opportunity and this was achieved through the experience of learning to juggle with three balls. All leaders were given the challenge of being able to juggle in under an hour. This seemingly overwhelming challenge is achievable through having the right process, the support of the team and the belief you can do it. Through the experience of juggling the leaders realized they can achieve with ease when they have the right mindset. This concept transferred easily to the promotion of embarking on the journey to become a great leader.
The workshop continued with the Harrison Assessment, which looks at traits and behaviours associated with leadership and is benchmarked against the top performers in the industry. Results are presented on a nameless and rankless team graph showing the similarities and dispersion of a set of related behaviours including: Motivation, Innovation and Strategic Acumen. The uniqueness of the system lies in Paradox Theory where seemingly contradictory behaviours are mapped with each other to draw out complementary and powerful behaviours. The results also flag up some underlying behaviours and suggest methods where teams can move into a more productive zone.
The Leadership Values Platform was also featured, where participants could present and discuss their subjective perceptions of leadership in an assertive and respected environment. This helped flag up different viewpoints and enabled aligning the perceptions to a unified concept of leadership skills necessary to keep Philips at the top.
The workshop closed with Newscast where teams reported the concepts of leadership in the style of a live news broadcast. This was recorded live and reviewed to document and reinforce the critical success factors of great leadership.
