by Jane Perdue | Leadership
Do you hear agitated, frustrated, and concerned whispers at your workplace…
I don’t know how to do any more with less.
I just can’t work any harder.
No one seems to care.
Is my job next?
Does anyone care about me as person, or is it all about the bottom line?
I don’t matter around here.
Are you hearing similar whispers in your head as you contemplate your career future in these tumultuous times?
With the job market still unstable, be gentle with yourself.
Nurture your skills, pay attention to your feelings, reach out for support.
Take time to laugh, to play, to reflect, to rejoice.
For those whom you lead, embed a heartbeat in your spreadsheet. Liberally sprinkle caring, heartfelt laughter, and time for talking and sharing into your need for accountability, results, and performance. Too much emphasis on logic makes the whispers of discontent louder. We’re all hard-wired to connect. When the workplace only seems to value results, people feel like they don’t matter. So the whispers begin.
What greater sign of illustrious leadership could there be today than someone who nurtures themself and who takes/makes the stand that they are leading from the head and the heart, too.
What have you done to nurture yourself and those you lead?
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Some quotes about leading from your head and heart on which to reflect
To work in the world lovingly means that we are defining what we will be for, rather than reacting to what we are against. ~Christina Baldwin
Leadership is not so much about technique and methods as it is about opening the heart. Leadership is about inspiration—of oneself and of others. Great leadership is about human experiences, not processes. Leadership is not a formula or a program, it is a human activity that comes from the heart and considers the hearts of others. It is an attitude, not a routine. ~Lance Secretan
Leadership is much more an art, a belief, a condition of the heart, than a set of things to do. The visible signs of artful leadership are expressed, ultimately, in its practice. ~Max Dupree
The task of leadership is not to put greatness into humanity, but to elicit it, for the greatness is already there. ~John Buchan
Your position never gives you the right to command. It only imposes on you the duty of so living your life that others may receive your orders without being humiliated. ~Dag Hammarskjöld
Are there heartbeats in your spreadsheets, or is everything all about the numbers? ~Jane Perdue
Image source before quote: pixabay
by Sean Conrad | Leadership
As managers, we’re all taught that to improve our employees’ performance, we need to identify and address performance or skill gaps with feedback, coaching, training, etc.
While this is sage advice, what it tends to do is get us focused on the negatives.
Our role as a manager can become focused on “fixing” our employees to make them better. This negative approach to performance management is one of the things that make employees dread their performance appraisals.
It can also cause tension between you and your staff; almost everyone gets defensive when they feel they are being criticized.
3 ways to accentuate the positive
So what if we changed the focus of our performance management from “fixing” problems to helping our employees make the most of their strengths and use them to support their weaknesses?
How would you do that practically?
Use Root Cause Analysis to Identify Factors That Lead to Success
Work with each employee to identify the conditions under which they excel. What are their strengths? What things are they passionate about? Do they work best in teams or alone? What kinds of people do they work best with? What kinds of projects or tasks do they excel at? Are they detail oriented or big picture thinkers? Do they tend to be motivated intrinsically or extrinsically? Do they need clear direction and parameters, or prefer some ambiguity and freedom?
By identifying the things that support an employee’s high performance, you can help them better understand their strengths. You can also then help replicate the conditions that bring out their best, and where possible, manage work assignments to take advantage of their strengths. Think of it as finding ways to get the maximum value out of your most strategic asset – your workforce.
For example, it you have an employee who works best alone and independently, try to assign them goals and tasks where they have to work independently, or at least team assignments where they have sole responsibility for a portion of the work. If you have an employee who is organized and has strong social skills, but is not detail oriented, try assigning them to projects where they manage people and activities, rather than data or details. Or, pair them up with a detail oriented employee for deliverables that require that skill.
Broaden and Deepen Knowledge/Skills/Experience with Development
In a similar way, you can put a positive focus on employee development. Rather than treat development as remedial, use it to expand your employees’ knowledge, skills and abilities. You’ll still need to address performance or skill gaps, but the primary focus of employee development should be growth. So look for opportunities to provide ongoing feedback, coaching and training that help your employees grow and expand on their current abilities and interests.
Reap the Rewards by Focusing on the Positives
But by focusing on the positives – on our employees’ innate strengths and interests – we build on their strengths, set them up for success, and grow their confidence.
It’s a way we can help our employees “get their big on”.
The end results tend to be a more engaged, productive and loyal workforce, not to mention a more positive and supportive work culture.
And that’s always good leadership.
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Today’s guest post is from Sean Conrad, a Certified Human Capital Strategist and Senior Product Analyst at Halogen Software.
Image source: morgueFile
by Jane Perdue | Leadership
As I cast the fishing line again and again into the incoming tide (I’m not about to win any angler prizes), it dawned on me there were leadership lessons to be learned from fishing.
Holy smokes!
I married into a clan with a rich heritage of fishing trips and tall tales about the elusive yet huge one that got away. Over the years I tolerated the fishing outings as I know Hubby did with the cultural outings and new restaurant adventures I favor.
Fishing usually finds me on mental autopilot, assessing what’s on my ‘to do’ list.
Why this fishing outing took on a deeper significance, I haven’t a clue yet I’m grateful for the epiphany.
As I watched everyone that day, a few insights became clear.
Leadership lessons from fishing (of all places!)
Every cast is an opportunity filled with promise and potential.
This time I’ll catch the big one. A single cast that didn’t return a fish wasn’t a failure. It simply meant you needed to try again (and again and again for me!). Consider how this optimistic attitude could improve many workplaces if leaders allowed room for the learnings that come with failure.
“The phoenix must burn to emerge.” ~Janet Fitch
Your catch is everyone’s prize.
The word of someone having “a fish on” quickly spreads with your fellow fisher-people offering encouragement and advice as you reel in. There are “oohs” and “ahs” when the fish is finally landed. The spirit of community from those you know—and those you don’t—is palpable, and positively infectious. It’s almost as if everyone there had a hand in catching the fish. Think how that shared spirit of accomplishment could transform a team.
“Each of us must rededicate ourselves to serving the common good. We are a community. Our individual Fates are linked; our futures intertwined; and if we act in that knowledge and in that spirit together, ‘We can move mountains.'” ~Jimmy Carter
My lessons are yours, and yours are mine.
The kind of bait or lure used to land a big one (and even a small fish) is shared, not viewed as some industrial secret to be hoarded or closely guarded. (To be sure, some fishing captains do take to their grave the coordinates of a particularly rich and always fruitful fishing hole.) Tips, pointers and advice are freely shared, and cordially received. Imagine a work place where feedback is constructively, promptly and lovingly given, and warmly welcomed and heeded. How productive such an organization would be!
“One day our descendants will think it incredible that we paid so much attention to things like the amount of melanin in our skin or the shape of our eyes or our gender instead of the unique identities of each of us as complex human beings.” ~Franklin Thomas
Off to share the blackened redfish!
What unlikely places have you picked up a leadership lesson or two?
Image source before quote: Gratisography
by Jane Perdue | Leadership
Effective leaders have a natural instinct for thinking more about “we” and less about “me.”
They:
Bring a team-oriented approach to achieving results, a spirit of “we’re all in this together” rather than a “me-centered” style where all that matters is the spotlight on them. (more…)
by Jane Perdue | Leadership
The committee chair’s presentation was spectacular—a succinct yet thoughtful description of the committee’s vision, what the company needed to accomplish over the next two years, why such results were needed, what other groups with a similar mission were doing, along with a handful of very high-level actions (some innovative and some not) that were required to produce the company’s desired outcomes.
Wow, went my brain, she totally nailed the strategic direction. She described the broad view and coupled it with just the right amount of high-level specifics.
I’m nodding my head in agreement.
A gentleman sitting at the same table obviously reached a totally different conclusion. He quietly muttered to no one in particular, “What I want to know is where did they find this tactical bozo.”
“Why do you say that?” I whispered in his direction.
“If you have to ask, then you don’t understand strategic planning either,” came the dismissive reply. The gentleman shook his head at me, stood up, and walked away from the table. He took a seat across the room.
Holy smokes, that was a fascinating reaction. One that made me wonder if I didn’t know as much about strategy as I thought I did.
Not wanting to spend too long in the “bozo corner” but interested in challenging my own reasoning and reactions to the woman’s presentation, I did research when I returned to the office.
I found fascinating information about the differences, similarities and outcomes of strategy work:
Strategy
- Wikipedia: “a word of military origin, refers to a plan of action designed to achieve a particular goal.”
- Exploring Corporate Strategy by Gerry Johnson: “…is the direction and scope of an organization over the long-term: which achieves advantage for the organization through its configuration of resources within a challenging environment, to meet the needs of markets and to fulfill stakeholder expectations”.
Strategic Planning
- Wikipedia: “an organization’s process of defining its strategy, or direction, and making decisions on allocating its resources to pursue this strategy, including its capital and people.”
- Henry Mintzberg, Professor of Management, McGill University: “…at it has been practiced, has really been strategic programming, the articulation and elaboration of strategies or visions, that already exist.”
Strategic Thinking
- Rich Horwath, Professor of Strategy, Lake Forest Graduate School of Business: the “generation and application of business insights on a continual basis to achieve competitive advantage.”
- Henry Mintzberg: “…is about synthesis. It involves intuition and creativity. The outcome of strategic thinking is an integrated perspective of the enterprise, a not-too-precisely articulated vision of direction.”
Strategic Management
- Wikipedia: the “conduct of drafting, implementing and evaluating cross-functional decisions that will enable an organization to achieve its long-term objectives.”
Strategy in general
A concept that resonated for me came from Fiona Graetz in which she distinguished strategic planning from thinking using divergent and convergent processes:
…a capacity for innovative, divergent strategic thinking rather than conservative, convergent strategic planning is seen as central to creating and sustaining competitive advantage
With all that to noodle, I settle on this take-away on strategy:
we have to help leaders create flexible structure and process so strategic action plans can be operationalized, and while all this happening, it’s important to also maintain openness of thought and creativity so the strategic plan can shift with changes as they occur or flex before changes occur.
What’s your take?
Image source: morgueFile.com
by Doretha Walker | Leadership
Doretha Walker
Leadership is not only important when you hold the title, but it is incredibly crucial when that title is no longer yours, when you get fired and have to do something new.
While from time to time we all dream about being free to pursue other opportunities, I do not think anyone really dreams about being fired. Severance packages aside, there is a certain amount of ego involved.
I hated my job.
I had allowed it to suck the life out of me.
I allowed it to take over my life making me completely miserable.
I continued to work hard making myself an invaluable employee. Or at least that’s what I thought.
Anyway, there are two sides to every story, and I found myself walking out of the door never to return. And while I will admit that leaving on my own terms was my preferred exit strategy, God often decides that something more drastic is required.
The truth is that I stayed much too long where I was. I referred to my job as ‘it pays the bills’. Not a ringing endorsement for the place where I spent most of my waking hours. Everything happens for a reason, doesn’t it? I needed to go.
Time for me to lead somewhere new
Now is when I am so happy that I’m a leader. Notice that I did not use past tense.
I firmly believe that leadership traits do not disappear when situations change only the method in which they are delivered is different.
I am still a leader. I still have the skills to prioritize, analyze, strategize, and motivate. Only for right now I need to use those skills on myself. I need to remain focused, remain positive and refuse to allow myself to feel sorry for myself. And above all else, do not panic. I still have a dissertation to write.
Lee Childs said it best:
It’s about opportunity… you’ve learned a few things.
You’ve got skills and work habits.
You’re in charge. But try something. Anything.
Sit back, take a breath, believe in yourself, identify your dream, and go for it 110%.
Trust me, your motivation will never be as strong.
And the chance might never come your way again.
At the moment, I have not entered into another employment opportunity, but I know what it is that I do not want. I am convinced that my leadership abilities will serve me well in whatever comes next.
And for now, I am doing some of those things that I wish I had the time to do before.
Today’s guest post is from Doretha Walker, Ph.D, past president of the Charleston, SC Center for Women, blogger, and professor. Having just done through some major life changes, Doretha shares some candid and touching insights.
