Leadership Monthly Update - Leading for Tomorrow
How can you assist your leaders to grow? Three sets of actions are needed:
- Effective leadership is part of the fabric of the organisation so that it occurs at all levels, as part of everyday activities.
- Individuals with leadership potential are identified, and equipped with appropriate just-in-time development tools - such as practical tips, customised training, coaching, self-diagnostics and networking opportunities.
- People are encouraged and assisted to seek experiences that expand their horizons beyond their current role and comfort zone.
Embed Leadership in the Organisation's Culture
Successful organisations create systems which encourage leaders to flourish at all levels. Leadership should not be a solo performance with the spotlight on the CEO. Rather it needs to be embedded in the organisation at all levels. To embed leadership at all levels:
- Recognise and celebrate success, creativity and innovation. People without a leadership title need to see how they are able to exercise leadership through their innovation and example to others.
- Tell compelling leadership stories often.
- Create clear development pathways for leaders and potential leaders.
- Build a culture where people feel it is ok to take risks and make mistakes - without this there can be no growth.
Identify and Equip Potential Leaders
In the past, leadership roles were often a reward or consequence of long service, or excellence in a technical role. This was not always successful - length of time in a role or technical expertise are not good indicators of leadership potential. With an increasingly mobile employee population,
who are quite prepared to go elsewhere if they feel their talents are not being recognised, new ways of identifying leadership potential are needed.
So how can you identify leadership potential, and harness it for your organisation?
- Provide
opportunities for potential leaders to perform. Where possible, rotate task and project assignments and even team leadership. Think of creative ways to help people test their leadership potential like participation in community activiites or involvement in a programme like Outward Bound.
- Have a leadership pathway, and encourage people to put their hands up for development – even in advance of formal appointment as a leader.
- Utilise tools such as climate surveys and 360 degree feedback to get an accurate picture of the health of current leadership.
Wherever possible, present opportunities to your potential leaders. These might include:
- Temporary or permanent transfers to other locations or offices
- Acting in leadership roles
- Project management responsibilities
The way your potential leader reacts to these opportunities will help you plan the organisation's future, and will provide them with opportunities for growth.
To equip your identified leaders:
- Provide recognised leadership training and other development opportunities.
- Have a leadership development pathway in your organisation that provides growth and challenge for leaders at all levels.
- Expect senior management to model the importance of learning and development – encourage their involvement both as learners and as mentors.
- Utilise capability assessments to get an accurate picture of current skills, and develop individual learning and development plans.
- Encourage networking opportunities - for example, pay for memberships in industry groups and conference attendance; if you work in a large organisation, sponsor internal networking events.
Encourage Leaders to Expand their Horizons
One quality common to all successful leaders is inquisitiveness. They want to discover:
- Why?
- How could it be done differently?
- What would happen if...?
- Where are we going?
Once they find answers to their questions, they use these answers to frame new questions, and new directions. Encourage questioning from your potential leaders, and use questioning yourself to encourage lateral thinking and innovation.
For information about Nexus Partners' leadership development and coaching programmes, email us or call on 0800 4 LEADERS. More information is also available online.
Back to Top
How to Keep Staff
In today's market, a good salary, four weeks' vacation and bonuses are not enough to lock in experienced potential employees. Going above and beyond the norm is what today's workforce respect - and organisations should provide - in order to keep their staff.
Otherwise, organisations face the financial burden of employee turnover. Financial models developed to estimate the cost of losing someone range from 50% to 150% of annual salary! If you know your turnover rate, take a moment to calculate the total annual cost to your organisation. Shocking isn't it?
Generation Y are a mobile employee population. Gone are the days of lifetime roles in a single organisation. HR expert and author of ‘Leadership Revelations, An Australian Perspective’, Avril Henry discusses predictions that the average Gen Y candidate will work for more than 29 employers throughout their career, and change career up to five times.
Henry states that “We are now in an employee's, and not an employer's, market”, and insists that employers must learn to adjust or face the consequences. She tells us that in order to recruit and retain these staff, it will be vital to have:
- Good leadership
- Challenging work
- Mentoring processes
These suggestion points are likely to assist in staff retention across all generations. This is also important as our older workers retire - taking with them a valuable knowledge resource. Click here to read a previous article about retaining older staff members.
So what else can we do to retain staff?
- One of the keys to staff retention is finding out what motivates your staff members, and providing it. It is no use making assumptions - "My team want better pay" - without asking about them first. If you assume your staff want pay rises when they would actually prefer flexible working hours, providing a pay increase or monetary incentive will not achieve improved retention.
HOT TIP: Use tools such as focus groups, staff surveys and climate surveys to discover what motivates your people.
- Develop a rewards-and-recognition policy that includes all staff (based on the motivators you have identified). This could include the use of personal letters of appreciation, monetary bonuses, flexi-time, small gifts.
- Encourage and provide personal development opportunites - training, conferences, industry group memberships etc.
- Have regular coaching sessions with your employees. Use a "What's going well? What could be done differently?" format.
- Where possible, allow your staff members to plan their work their way.
- Support employee wellness.
Recognize when an employee is putting in long hours, seems unhappy, or takes a number of sick days. Have a support system in place where the employee can raise any issues safely. Ensure that you are providing a safe workplace.
For information about Nexus Partners' tools for leaders, email us or call on 0800 4 LEADERS. More information is also available online.
Back to Top
Team Development - Building a Culture of Continuous Improvement in your Team
Last month we discussed creating a learning environment in your team. We discovered that the team leader was the key. This month we are taking it one step further - we're looking at the top 10 characteristics of a team leader who encourages growth.
Missed last month's segment? Read it online!
In a team where growth is encouraged, team learning and continuous improvement is inevitable. A team leader who encourages growth will exhibit a number of characteristics that are known to succeed.
The Top 10 Indicators of a Team Leader who Encourages Growth
Ask yourself the following 10 questions. If you can answer yes to 8 or more of them, you are encouraging growth in your team.
- Are we developing increasing respect and regard for each other's different strengths?
- Do I know what is most important for the team?
- Do we communicate well with one another and handle criticism without feeling threatened?
- Are my people (and am I) growing in capability?
- Are we developing the team fit and chemistry that enables us to turn in exceptional team performances, like great sports teams?
- Do I put the team's best interest ahead of my "status" as leader, because the team's success is more important?
- Do we play to our strengths whenever possible and shoulder extra responsibilities when there are gaps in the team?
- When I'm away, do my team members grab opportunities with both hands and try to turn in great performances?
- Am I aware of the team's progress, and what to prioritise in order to succeed at any given moment?
- Do I buy into the cost of leadership - am I willing to do the hard work necessary and be held accountable to ensure the team's success?
As well as these 10 important points, there is one more key step we can take to encourage growth in the team.
This step is to build an environment where people feel that it is ok to make a mistake. If the team feels that mistakes must be avoided at all costs, there will be no risks taken, no exploration and no growth. Team members will keep doing the same "safe" things. They will avoid asking "What could we do differently?" and instead get stuck in the "If it's not broken, don't fix it" rut.
HOT TIP: Invest in some leadership training for yourself, or some team development work with your team. It can also be beneficial to undertake a process like 360 degree feedback - this shows your team you are open to their input and are aiming for personal growth.
Want some help with encouraging growth in your team? Email us for more information about Nexus Partners' team development programmes, or call on 0800 4 LEADERS. More information about team development is also available online.
Back to Top
Tips for Constructing a Vision
Vision is key to leadership, yet many leaders struggle with constructing and communicating vision. Vision is essential - it provides guidance to a team or business articulating what it wishes to attain. It serves as "a signpost pointing the way for all who need to understand what the future is and where the business intends to go" (Nanus, 1992). It also guides the work of the team. Vision is “a picture of a detailed future for which people are willing to work”. (Senge, 1994).
In the literature concerning leadership, vision has a variety of definitions, all of which include a mental image or picture, a future orientation, and aspects of direction.
However, vision is more than an image of the future. It has a compelling aspect that serves to inspire, motivate, and engage people. Vision has been described by Manasse (1986) as "the force which moulds meaning for the people of an organization." It is a force that provides meaning and purpose to work. Vision is a compelling picture of the future that inspires commitment. It answers the questions: Who is involved? What do they plan to accomplish? Why are they doing this? Vision therefore does more than provide a picture of a desired future; it encourages people to work, to strive for its attainment.
A well-constructed vision has four characteristics. It:
- produces commitment and energises people
- creates meaning in workers' lives
- establishes a standard of excellence
- bridges the present to the future
Your vision statement should describe what your operation will be like at some defined point in the future. It is a critically important business tool because it keeps everyone in the team focused on the same arrival point. It can be a good idea for leaders to develop their vision co-operatively with the whole business team.
To arrive at your vision you need to ask one simple question:
What will our business be like 3-5 years from now? OR
What will our part of the business be like 3-5 years from now?
Supplementary questions that can help you to arrive at vision are:
- What kinds of projects will we be focussed on?
- Who will our customers be?
- How will we be delivering our services?
- What type of work environment do we want?
- What goals will we have met by then?
- What will be our team’s special areas of expertise?
Vision must be:
- clear
- visual (contains word pictures)
- future tense
- referenced to a particular point in time
- specific yet descriptive
In the next issue we will give you some vital tips for sharing and communicating your vision with your people.
For information about how Nexus Partners can assist you with developing and communicating your vision, email us or call on 0800 4 LEADERS.
Back to Top
Book Review - Tom Peters Essentials: Leadership by Tom Peters
Win a copy of Tom Peters Essentials: Leadership
This book has some radical and refreshing ideas about what effective leadership really means, and the way to go about it. It is quick to read, to the point, with mini case studies that illustrate each main point in a practical way. It is part of the Tom Peters Essentials series - a break-down of the best-selling title Re-Design! into 4 topic-related books.
The first chapter clarifies 50 essential aspects to leadership that can be applied by any kind of leader. As I read through what seemed a long list, I found each point made indispensable and worthwhile. At the same time, it was clear that a good leader need not encompass every item on the list, but should work with other leaders who complement their skill set.
Peters writes about leadership that will survive the New Economy. He makes it clear that historical command and control methods, amongst many other concepts, must change for successful future leadership. His prediction is that 90% of white-collared jobs will be replaced by some form of technology in the next 10-15 years, and expresses an urgency for people to reinvent themselves to add value to their role in a more meaningful way.
Leaders of organisations need to take the responsibility of encouraging that change also. However, one theme that runs consistently throughout the book is that change cannot be ordered, and needs to be brought about in more subtle ways. This requires pursuing ‘talent’ in people Peters calls ‘heroes’, and encouraging them to use it to inspire others to follow. The main tool for this inspiration is story telling: making an achievement known to others in the organisation and celebrating it.
The book provides some intriguing insights about how attributes in the past considered "feminine" are so suitable for leading in the future. It also puts emphasis on the importance of young people and their ability to embrace technology. There are countless other viewpoints that Peters puts across in wacky yet profound ways, so I thoroughly recommend browsing through these yourself.
Click here to enter the draw to win a copy of Tom Peters Essentials: Leadership. Alternatively, reply to this email with Prize Draw in the subject line.
Back to Top
Website Launch Draw Winners
Congratulations to our 11 lucky winners from the website launch draw. We gave away a $300 Jetter merino wool jacket from Icebreaker, along with 10 copies of the must-read book, Reaching The Summit, Edmund Hillary's Life of Adventure.
- Michelle Macdonald, Toovey Eaton & Macdonald Ltd
- Steve Leppien, Genesis Energy Tuai
- Margaret Shields, Greater Wellington
- Linda Palmer, Massey University Library - Turitea
- Sue Powell, Ministry for the Environment
- Jacquie Mosen, Ministry of Agriculture & Forestry
- Jane Campbell, New Zealand Lotteries Commission
- Carolyn Hooper, Pharmaceutical Society of New Zealand
- Annette Carrington, Salvation Army Employment Plus
- Karen Mekalick, South Taranaki District Council
- Richard Bax, Waikato District Council
Back to Top
Copyright Nexus Partners Ltd, 2006. www.nexuspartners.co.nz 0800 4 LEADERS (0800 4 532337)
Nexus Partners Ltd is committed to protecting your privacy. We do not sell, trade, rent or otherwise disclose any personal information you provide to us.
|
