Posts Tagged ‘Leadership’
Communication – The Common Leadership Competency
Posted by: grandma in Employee Engagement, Leadership, Talent Management on June 6th, 2010
“If they are to be effective, all communicative acts must be interactive.”
-Conrad and Poole, Strategic Organizational Communication (2005)
Yukl (2001) examined a number of definitions of leadership and concluded that no one definition encompasses all of the aspects required of a leader. Most agree, however, that communication plays a huge role in effective leadership. Communication rolls into some of the other leadership traits like setting an agenda, strategic planning, modeling the way, inspiring a shared vision, and transformational leadership.
Employee engagement largely rests on upper management’s ability to communicate with line and staff. According to Towers Watson, 15 of the 20 factors of engagement are directly related to the manager. The other 5 are engagement factors related to the organization – meaning that it very important for the employee to feel connected to a company’s culture, policies, and strategic direction.
Let’s look at 8 of the 20 following factors for engagement for both sets:
• Provide fair and accurate informal feedback
• Emphasize employee strengths in performance reviews
• Clarify performance expectations
• Leverage employee “fit” to the job
• Provide solutions to day-to-day challenges
• Amplify positive employee performance traits and filters negative effects
• Connect employees with the organizations’ strategy and its success
• Instill a performance culture of open communication, flexibility, and innovation
What do all of these have in common? Communication…!
HR is the staff function that should facilitate organizational communication. Communication, like other competencies, has different behavioral anchors depending on the leadership level. Certainly CEO’s in large companies have anchors that require them to communicate with the entire organization.
So how does a CEO/Leadership connect with the company of 10,000 employees? How does operations roll out a project? How does a VP of HR convey new programs? I happened to be in demonstration with a major ERP vendor when they presented a new product called “Workforce Communications”. It gives a company the ability to do targeted communications with its employees based on attributes contained in their HR systems. It also has the ability to conduct bi-fabricated organizational surveys (meaning a certain answer in the first survey could trigger another survey or follow-up question) like employee engagement. So if the CEO of a company wanted to send a congratulations to the engineering team for obtaining 100% safety compliance, you could simply identify the requisite job codes in the HR tables (and throw in other criteria to personalize it) and send the targeted communication. Does it send a message to those engineers that safety is important when the CEO writes? Absolutely!
Pretty inventive software which you would not expect coming from an ERP vendor, which by the way, was Oracle.
Best and Worst CEO’s
Posted by: grandma in Leadership, Talent Management on April 30th, 2009
In the May 2009 issue of Conde Nast Portfolio, they list the best and worst CEO’s ever. Number 1 on the “best” list was Henry Ford; Number 1 on the “worst list was Dick Fuld from Lehman Brothers. Now this list was judged on criteria for creating destroying/value, innovation, and management skills (or lack therof). The panel they chose for this list were professors from some of the best business schools in the United States (Sloan, Kellogg, Wharton etc.) What disappointed me the most about the “best list” was not one comment was written about how these CEO’s embodied strong human capital practices.
A couple of things stood out for on this list:
Best/Worst -Jack Welch of GE– the panel couldn’t decide whether or not to put him in the best or the worst category? Really? In my book, he is one of the best, if not the best CEO ever. Jack Welch may have fired many employees but at least he did it based on a credible measuring system. GE in many ways set the benchmark for Performance Management best practices. Jack thought his whole job was to put the right people in the right positions. Do this, and strategy and execution will come along for the ride.
Worst - Al Dunlap of Scott Paper and Sunbeam– if you asked the same panel back in 1998 what they thought of him, I’m sure they would have put him on the “best” side of this list. To me, Al Dunlap isn’t even a CEO. He was a liquidator. It doesn’t take much management skill to take a “chainsaw” to a company. When he actually had to manage Sunbeam he failed miserably.
Best – Herb Kelleher – SWA is the best, non-subsidized airline in the world. Instead of setting organizational goals to enrich shareholder value, they focus on the customer and their employees. Increased shareholder value is a by-product of this effort. It was disappointing to see the magazine cite their fuel hedging program as the reason for success when it’s the employees that make this company what it is.
The list focused on CEO’s of Public Companies and really looked at shareholder return. One person I would put on the “best” from the private side is Jim Goodnight of SAS. He said in an interview with 60 minutes a few years back, “95% percent of my assets leave the building every day, it is my job to bring them back.” Wouldn’t you like to work for a company whose CEO values you as his most important asset?
Time and time again, CEO’s who focus on their employees significantly outperform their competitors in every financial metric that matters. Hopefully, this panel will question the ratings criteria next time and rank CEO’s on their Human Capital practices. Now this is a list I would like to see.
Josh McDaniels epitomizes Fixed Mindset
Posted by: grandma in Employee Development, Employee Engagement, Leadership, Talent Management on March 18th, 2009
Fixed Mindset case Number 1: Yoga
“Today somebody came into my office and asked me about a yoga instructor helping the players. I never thought I’d be talking about yoga. I don’t know anything about yoga.” -Josh McDaniels – Denver Post 1/25/2009
When asked about Yoga and other items 2 weeks later: “The football part of it has been pretty much what I thought it would be,” McDaniels said. ”Some of the decisions you make on a daily basis, on non-football issues, have been a little surprising. The color of paint on your walls. Whether to do yoga. I’ve never really had the opportunity to decide things like that.” Asked what he decided on yoga, McDaniels said he said no, even though his mother, Chris, enjoys it. ”There’s not a lot of teams in the league that were doing that,” he said. ”I’m not sure you have to do that to be successful.” – this means the Patriots didn’t do it…
• Yoga helped Jordan Farmar with his 42” vertical in the NBA combine
• Yoga helped Kareem Abdul-Jabaar play well into his 40’s
• Your future perennially all-pro left tackle, Ryan Clady does yoga
Fixed Mindset case number 2: Mike Leach
Mike Leach was the long-snapper for the Denver Broncos since 2002. The first signing that Josh McDaniels in the off-season was to sign Lonnie Paxton making him the 2nd highest paid long snapper at 5.3 million in the NFL shelling out 1 million in a signing bonus.
So what was so wrong with Leach that Josh McDaniels needed to bring in Lonnie Paxton? Did he muff some snaps? Did he send the ball over the punter’s head? Did he throw it too hard so the holder couldn’t place it for the kicker?
Let’s look at Mike Leach’s numbers:
40 extra points – any blocks, muffs?
34 field goals – any blocks, muffs?
46 Punts – any blocks, muffs?
None.
None.
And None.
What was so great about Lonnie? He was a Patriot.
Fixed Mindset Case Number 3 – Jay Cutler – Managing your “A” Player
You are a high-performing individual contributor and you were just notified that your new boss starts today. You didn’t anticipate the change because you thought your manager was solid. You are the star of your manager’s team. You know your skills are marketable and there are several competitors that would love to have you. You get a call from a head-hunter that you know and you find out that your new manager is trying to replace you with one of “his guys” from his old firm. You haven’t had a single conversation with this new manager so how can he assess your skills and assume “his guy” is better than you? Lo and behold, “his guy” went to another company with a better offer. You approach your new manager about this and he denies it; you have the evidence that proves otherwise.
How would this make you feel about your long-term prospects at the firm?
Could you put your full faith in your new manager?
Is this good management?
There isn’t much difference between a player and a coach in the business world:
• The manager/employee relationship is predicated on trust
• You still have a hierarchy – Head Coach, Position Coach, Player
• You have mutual goals – To win the division, to get home field advantage, to win the SuperBowl
• A good manager knows you perform better when you are engaged – The most successful quarterbacks have had a great quarterbacks coach
• A good manager helps develop your skills
• A good manager wants you to be more successful than him
The number one reason why someone leaves a company is the relationship with their manager. If you are not hired by your manager, your performance rating will generally be lower. This is a proven correlation.
If Josh McDaniels were in the business world, he should be fired for incompetence at the manager level. Pat Bowlen should seriously make this consideration.
The Myth of Heroic Leadership – Give Obama a Pass
Posted by: grandma in Employee Development, Leadership on January 31st, 2009
I was sitting around with 8 of my Republican friends last night, and they are behind Barack Obama 100%, hoping that he will be the best President ever. Obviously there are several issues challenging America today. Can one man right the ship when so many checks and balances are in place to prevent this? Conversely, can one really sink the ship with all of these government controls? Just as Bush isn’t responsible for wrongs in America, Obama can’t and won’t be responsible for all the things necessary to turn this thing around.
Headlines in Austrailia read: “America has its Messiah”. I couldn’t help but observe the crowd fawning over Obama, crying like he will be the opiate to their pain. Expectations of Obama supporters are dangerously high. If you don’t strongly agree with this then you need a reality check. I think Republicans will give Obama a pass – I see his biggest challenges coming from his own party. (See Peloisi) One of Obama’s best qualities is that he can see situations from multiple viewpoints. Unlike Bush, he’s not so steadfast in his convictions that he won’t take a step back and re-evaluate his position. To me, this true leadership. The press and most Republicans would call this “Flip-Flopping”. I hate this label.
Morgan McCall, author of “High Flyers”, identified one common trait among the best leaders: They are life-long learners. “The real leaders of the future are those who have the ability to learn from their experiences and remain open to continuous learning.”