Are we suffering from excessive leadership?

In the vast majority of the management courses we can hear a lot of messages addressed to the executives talking about the excellence and competitiveness of the organizations in the global economy including the meaning of social responsibility, human capital, quality, strategy, innovation and knowledge management. But on top of this message there is one mentioned very often, the leadership.  In my opinion this is really a fashionable word, this post is about my reflection if sometimes we are suffering excessive leadership.

The question is the managers/executives have to catalyze the performance of the areas under their responsibility with a satisfactory working environment. We may call this as leadership but I would say that bosses and subordinates feel as such or better to say like executives and collaborators. It does not seem some feel like real leaders and the others followers but it could be considered as the leadership of subordinates, the so-called human resources displayed after achieving the desired outcome and fostering the best possible working environment.

Although the relationship is obviously hierarchical the above mentioned fashionable word is very common above all in the human resources scope. In my opinion we should start avoiding the “label” human resources and assume that you are a leader by the decision-choice of your followers instead of being a leader because you are the boss or you have attended to a seminar of leadership. To explain it a little bit more, just think about creativity where it depends on we are perceived as creative people and not because we have attended to creativity seminars. But the truth is there are a lot of talks about leadership and human resources but if we talk about resources the right word would be “managing” instead of “leading”.

This particular leadership can be exerted, of course, with different management styles, based on corporate culture, based on the personality of the individuals. Apart from the alterations of the professional values and competence shortage that can be found in the senior leaders/executives we could also focus some distress in their behavior probably due to the stress, anxiety, obsessions etc. In this context of this behavior “disorder” I would also add some level of excess of leadership. It is likely I could be wrong but sometimes I think that some leaders guided by this fashionable word or due to the excess of reading books about leadership or even by attending too much leadership courses or conferences they are overacting and assuming an excessive prominence.

Needless to remember that the leader to some extent is the superhero of the literature about management and that a lot of consultants, coaches and lectures are settled in the leadership skills as the essential quality of the senior executive.

Sometimes, I honestly think there is an excess of leadership and between all this worrying some kind of delirium. It is likely some leaders will be successful in the head. I cannot generalize but I read a lot of books on the subject during my career and I can remember striking statements. For example, the leader has to conquer the intelligence, the wish and the emotions of the followers. Another example, the leader is the one who achieves people do what they have to do. And the last example, managing people is difficult because they have sex, age and character. My conclusion on the above is that some authors think the leader is the hero and the followers are pure mediocrity. I could be wrong in my conclusion, apologize for it.

I also think the balance, moderation and common sense is the most common scenario. However, there may be some cases where some leaders, under questionable influences, show a behavioral distress with the following indications:

• Permanent instructions and controls in the people management that remember the “old foreman style”.

• Tendency to ignore the knowledge, initiative, ideas, opinions, merit, expectations and even the needs of the subordinates.

• Tribute to the own ego and the appearances which leads to the inability to recognize errors or lack of competences and accept criticism.

• Excess of self-esteem and sense of being indispensable and infallible utilizing the rest of people as mere resources.

• Exaggeration about the past achievements and lack of realism to formulate new goals.

• Desire to impose beliefs, values, feelings and habits in his/her collaborators beyond the desirable alignment of efforts.

• Manipulating practices such as promises, motivating pep talks, lies, encouragement of dependency, “smoke screens”, etc.

But the question is why this excess of leadership? In my opinion there are different reasons. 

A lot of young executives/leaders attend to training and development programs where they claim a special talent, a promising future where they are requesting to take risks without fear of failure, being optimistic and positive. Where the need and relevance of leadership is emphasized and where they are told, in many cases, that without leadership the efforts of the teams will not deliver results. Maybe a dangerous adulation. 

What is then the fair point of leadership? The vast majority of leaders seem to know it, but in this context, I would say it is the one in which the leader forgets his/her condition of leader and, conversely, the subordinates feel themselves followers.

The final question would be, is there a treatment for the excess of leadership? The reply is probably there is but it would go through the detailed review of the mental models. But the fact is that some leadership training courses do not neutralize the “disorder” but foster it. Some cultures and management styles do not neutralize it either. Based on that the excess of leadership is frequently irreversible and the best would be to prevent it. Prevent it very carefully and with attention so that “the frog would not boil”. We need to insist that any artificial enhancement of the executive/leader could generate a dose of inhibition of valuable abilities in the subordinates/collaborators.

The q

Talent Development (every talent belongs to someone)

Indeed, this post is about talent. In the last years the acquisition and development of talent is a priority in the agenda of the vast majority of organizations and executives.

But this is not really new. In my experience managing different teams we have different ways of developing the talent, for example, why instead of looking from the top how to develop the talent we apply our intelligence to help them to discover their own? I will try to explain what I mean.

Let´s start to ask ourselves some questions as follows:

·         Which is the talent that makes them unique and it is needed by the organization?

·         In which situations and how they could develop it?

·         Why we don’t create scenarios and opportunities so they could effectively test it?

·         What if we give them feedback about how they did it and how they could improve it?

If you are worried to retain your key employees, those who will allow you to carry out your corporate strategy which took a lot of resources (time, effort and expertise) to be planned I can understand your worries.

Allow me to tell an example from my own experience. Some time ago when I was leading a finance department I proposed to my organization to look the talent development from a different perspective. We need to consider the human being aspect that was my argument. I did not get too much approval, to be honest, no approval at all. I heard things like “this is not your business you just do the changes approved by the senior management” or “we understand your point but you know, here the things are different, people don’t leave the company, they need the money and they do whatever”. The attrition rate was increasing dramatically. But not only the new employees were leaving but also the most seniors as well, including some pioneers and also the so called “right hands”. How was this possible? Was not money everything?

I insisted that we needed to ask different questions, intelligent questions. Avoiding the questions where the replies could be premeditated. The senior management and the HR Director asked me to prepare a list with my proposals. Well, see below some examples:

·         How do you feel on Monday morning?

·         How do you feel on Friday afternoon?

·         Do you think we should offer anything different to our customers?

·         What obstacles, from the leadership perspective, do we put to allow you to do your tasks?

·         Do you know how your work contributes to the business?

·         How do you think we could save money?

·         If your work is not for 10 points, what do you lack to do it?

·         What was the latest decision senior management made and you did not understand?

·         How we could communicate these decisions in a clearer way next time?

·         How could you do you work more effectively?

·         If you could change the collective behavior of the organization, what would it be?

·         How you see, how you feel working in the team of this company?

·         What make you feel proud of working in this company?

·         What did you learn last week? From whom did you learn anything?

I could add more but I don’t want to bore the reader!!!

The above questions did the people spoke out.  Speak out if you are concerned, that was the message. When you ask people honestly they are ready to share their thoughts. They talk with the expectations that something is going to change. At the end of the day we have to tell the employee which is the talent the company needs from him/her.

As you know the quality of the answers are based on the quality of the questions. The reason for the above mentioned questions was to look for clues to clear up the uncertainty in terms of what the person considers the company could do to improve his/her performance and results. In other words it is the employee who will express the intention to develop and strengthen those capabilities that would increase his/her value, image and self-confidence. Hence the question is: what is the organization doing to create opportunities where the talent of the employees can be put in practice? We don’t need to assign the role of team leader immediately but the person can be a team member where he/she can feel is useful, trustful and part of something superior and important.

Continuing with the above example after telling the employees what was the talent most needed and how they could apply it and after including them in challenging projects the situation started to change. The employees started to express their opinions and freeing the first talent: to respond creatively and sincerely to honest questions and concrete experiences. In this scenario the ability of the company to capture all these comments and transform in recognition and concrete rewards started to create a philosophy of respect for the own capabilities and the willingness to “walk an extra mile”.

The takeaway of this story is to know the organizations cannot assume the right to lead and manage the talent, the knowledge, the culture, the satisfaction or any other intangible which is flying over the company. The persons have to be seen from a global perspective so the organization can meet their motivations better than other only focused on satisfying the own needs even if they are well-intentioned.

Based on the above managing the talent should not be the “business priority” of the moment but to ask ourselves: if we already have the base group in our organization with dozens of talents waiting to be shown up, what can we do with them? It is about maximizing the current talent not to manage it. And actually is not a “war of talent” as in the war nobody wins. The searching should be in the opposite, in my view, get that all win, the employee, the manager the organization and the society. This way winning the heart of the people and establishing the mechanisms and support that contains the discipline people will remain in your organization. Do the right thing others will imitate it.

The boss: to be or not to be (nothing is what it seems)

! You seem the boss! Are you the boss? When we analyze the features, the behaviors and the attitudes of who have the responsibility to lead people or manage teams we come to the conclusion that bosses are who feel as bosses, who assume the commitment to achieve profitable results for the company and for their collaborators.

The society of the image, in which we currently live, can distort the reality of who is in command in an organization in such a way that the appearance to be the boss can create a benefit to whom being in managerial roles does not act as true managers but as “true actors”.

Becoming accustomed to a managerial role using all kind of tricks to assure the continuation in this position and the correspondent good salary is the goal and benefit of those who would like the world not to turn, not to change of temperature and not to suffer any problem in the markets.

Luckily life goes on and change constantly offering opportunities of entrepreneurial improvements, corporate goals and collective performance. It changes so quickly that there is no time to change the mask and act in the next scene.

They are staying out of the picture many managers who proclaim themselves as the bosses, just credited by the name and position hanging from the door of their desks, not by the valuation and acceptance of their collaborators who identify them as responsible of the bad working environment, of the demotivation in the company, the high rate of absenteeism and finally of the poor economic results.

For who is profitable to pretend to be the boss? The answer is easy: for whoever appears to be. And, who harms such appearance? To the whole company and to all the actors who participate in the creation and optimization of the productivity in the organization.

If you consider you act under the appearance criteria to be the boss I would recommend you to think about the huge and serious damages that are impacting to the company in which you’re a manager or director. It is also important you think about your professional career and personal development in the last months.

If you feel as above probably you could request the help of a professional coach so you can decrease your professional fears, to stop pretending and improve your performance focused on the so called transparency.

You would need to learn how to work with emotional intelligence, managing your emotions and the emotions of your collaborators fostering productive and healthy attitudes and behaviors for the organization and for the rest of employees.

You could also use the collaboration and support of some of your collaborators, if possible people that are sincere and honest. Why not this employee you marginalized because he was very critic with you? So the first step you need to take to feel as “the true boss” is the desire to re-learn how to manage and lead giving up to  be a “fiction actor” focused on intending to serve to your collaborators optimizing the company performance and improving the working environment.

Once you are integrated in the “club of the true bosses”, who are recognized by all customers, internal and external, of the company you have to decide if you want to be a normal boss, a good boss or an excellent boss. All will depend on your degree of commitment with the organization and employees goals.

If you decided to become an excellent boss you will need to work with practical intelligence transforming the entrepreneurial and professional excellence in daily tangible actions to manage your team. Any action of improvement of the performance will increase the culture of working excellence, organizational innovation and the culture of prevention for the interpersonal problems in the company.

There are a lot of professionals that due to their attitudes and aptitudes could be consider as true bosses but even for these “special bosses” it is very beneficial to be surrounded by an excellent team continuously providing feedback of their behavior and actions.