by Charles Plant | Jul 8, 2013 | Leadership Development
Why is it that managers think teamwork is better than employees do? Everyone says that managers are oblivious to reality and don’t really know what’s going on in their companies but until now, I have yet to see this reflected in research.
We just surveyed 500 knowledge workers to see what they think. The survey has shown that managers see their work much more positively than do their employees. Either something isn’t getting through to management or they are ignoring problems.
Whatever the cause, the result is that managers don’t put in the programs that are necessary to improve teamwork at work.
We wanted to look at how knowledge workers view their organization in terms of teamwork and the people they work with. To do this we looked at five specific attributes of the workplace: Teamwork, Positivity, Trust, Commitment, and Respect.
In the first of the findings, we determined that most employees think that they work well together as a team. In fact 73% agree or disagree with the statement “We work well together as a team.”
Unfortunately, managers seem to think that teamwork is a lot better than employees do. While managers have a positive net promoter score of 2%, employees have a negative score of negative 3%.
You can check out the results of the research here.
by Charles Plant | Jul 3, 2013 | Leadership Development
I’ve had a few interesting discussions about corporate culture recently and how it gets reinforced in an organization. One group I talked with has a quarterly contest in which employees get nominated by their peers for work that displays their corporate culture.
One organization I had read about that does a good job reinforcing culture is Hubspot. Check out this slide show on their corporate culture.
The Hubspot Culture Code
To me the best part of the whole slide show is the tag line “Creating a company we love.”
by Charles Plant | Jul 2, 2013 | Leadership Development
I was talking to several people (which I do from time to time) and heard two great stories about companies whose communication with staff is exemplary. In the research I’m doing, this is coming across as one of the biggest complaints that people are having, employees don’t know what’s going on in their own company.
The first is Canadian Tire. They go out of their way to make sure everyone is singing on the same song sheet. Every week, every person has a sit-down meeting with his or her manager to review what’s going well and what’s not working. It’s informal but a useful checkpoint. On a monthly basis, the meeting is formal with metrics, objectives, and results all reported in writing and discussed.
On an as-needed basis The Tire gets everyone together to announce what’s going on before the rest of the world hears about it. For their recent Olympic announcement, they had a big get-together and party so that staff didn’t hear about this exciting new initiative in the press.
The other company is Blackberry. According to a very engaged source, Thorsten Heins started a new tradition of sending an email update to every person on the company every month just to tell them what”t going on. Apparently the effect is to make many people have a much tighter bond with the company.
It’s so easy to communicate but so often forgotten.
by Charles Plant | Jun 28, 2013 | Leadership Development
The research and training I’m doing has made me realize that it’s not enough to train someone to be a better leader, you have to give them a forum in which to lead. You have to give them a structure within which they can use their skills and behaviours. You need to give them a leadership process.
If you want leaders to do a better job setting vision,don’t make them do workshops on goal setting, make them spend more time on writing good job descriptions. Employees need to know what the company’s mission is and what their place is in meeting that mission. That’s what a job description does.
If you want leaders to communicate better,don’t send them to a class on public speaking or writing, make them hold regular meetings and write regular reports. Employees need to know what’s going on elsewhere in the company and understand the context and reasons for decisions and that is the function of meetings and reports.
If you want leaders to delegate and not micromanage, don’t send them to delegation workshops, make them develop metrics for themselves and each member of their team. Employees need metrics so they know what is expected of them, so they know if they are doing a good job and so that their leader can delegate with comfort. That is the function of metrics.
If you want leaders to be better motivators, don’t give them books to read on motivation, make them develop a system of praise and rewards. Employees need recognition and praise and that is the function of a rewards system.
If you want leaders to be better coaches, don’t make them watch a video on coaching, make them hold weekly casual meetings and monthly formal meetings with each staff member individually. Employees need to talk about their progress regularly and have an opportunity to learn and grow and that is the function of individual coaching sessions.
The irony of the situation is not lost on me. I have spent my life focusing on process and I’ve come full circle, even on leadership, realizing that without a leadership process, you won’t get good leadership.
by Charles Plant | Jun 27, 2013 | Leadership Development
Whether you believe in Trait Theory, Skills Theory, some behavioural theory of leadership or whatever, the problem remains that if you don’t have a leadership process built then you won’t do a very good job of it.
Please forgive the references to soccer but it’s much the same thing. You may know how to kick the ball but if you don’t play in a game, have a game plan, and execute on that plan, it’s a little hard to score a goal. In being a leader, I think you need a process around leadership so that you can set a vision, communicate, delegate, motivate, and coach effectively.
If you have a vision, you’ll need to show your followers how they fit into delivering on that vision and that is the function of work design and job descriptions.
It’s one thing to learn how to communicate but you need meetings and reports within which to communicate. A leadership process would have a regular series of team meetings, backed up with written reports.
If you’re going to delegate, you need to know what outcomes you want and what results you’re getting so that you know if things are going well. This is the function of metrics.
To motivate, you’ll need a compensation and rewards program.
Finally, to coach someone effectively, you’ll need regularly scheduled individual meetings.
Without a leadership process in place, a leader will not be able to be effective at individual leadership behaviours and will fail as a leader.
This is performance management, organizational development and whatever you want to call it. It is the nuts and bolts of turning strategy into daily action, into delivering results, into improving employee engagement and return on people.
by Charles Plant | Jun 26, 2013 | Leadership Development
No matter what leadership theory you believe in, beyond certain skills required in figuring out a vision (technical business skills), leadership comes down to all sorts of qualities that impact on how you:
- Communicate
- Delegate
- Motivate
- Coach
If you believe in Trait Theory, these will all come naturally. If you believe leadership as a behaviour, things get a little more complex because behaviours are very hard to learn and impossible to learn using the typical classroom model.
I’ve tended to believe that leadership is not a trait but a learned set of behaviours. I’ve been trying to figure out how to train people effectively to adopt new behaviours. To do this, I’ve been developing digital media tools to reinforce training through repetition. I also added testing to the mix to ensure that people had to learn.
In working with clients though, I have gotten the feeling lately that something is still missing. Let’s look at soccer for example. You can’t learn to play soccer in a classroom. Like a behaviour, learning to play soccer requires a coach and lots of practice.
But what it also requires is that you play a game and even more, during that game, you must be assigned a position, know your responsibilities in that position and have a chance to kick the ball. If you don’t kick the ball very often, you won’t get much better.
I think that’s the problem with leadership and its teaching. We don’t give leaders enough chance to kick the ball. We don’t give leaders the process in which they can improve and perfect their leadership skills. We don’t give them a process to be leaders.
Maybe this is my new thing, leadership as a process that can support all of the different styles that are out there in the world of leadership theory.
Why is it that managers think teamwork is better than employees do? Everyone says that managers are oblivious to reality and don’t really know what’s going on in their companies but until now, I have yet to see this reflected in research.