Leadership & Management

The impact of leadership – positive or negative, it's always significant!

Everyone has a default or preferred way of handling the role of manager or leader, and some are more effective than others. Often people were appointed into management roles for skills other than their management capacity. Too often that preferred default style (the result of a person’s personality and what they’ve learnt both formally and informally through modeling others) becomes their modus operandi.

While great leaders help produce committed, performance-oriented organisations, ineffective leadership has the opposite impact. It erodes everyone's ability to even deal well with 'business as usual', let alone meet the extra demands in times of change.

Just a few recent story headlines capture this problem convincingly:

• “Unpredictable Leaders Make Employees Crazy”;
• “How Bad Bosses Kill Employee Engagement”;
• “Leaders who shut down communications miss information that might solve their important problems”;
• “Failing to give feedback to the team is a missed leadership opportunity”;
• “The effects of micromanagement on morale and creativity in the workplace”.

Because leaders influence so many people inside and outside the organisation, small improvements can makes a big difference through leverage. Leadership development is an area where your investment brings a multiplied return.

There are lots of models out there now regarding what makes for a good or great leader. But quantity is not quality – and our aim is to use only the best models available.

The Leadership Circle™.

The key model we work with is the Leadership Circle framework, which captures the best of all of them. An assessment based around this framework reveals much about the tools and skillsets of a leader, but more than that, about how comprehensively they deliver on the very essence of great contemporary leadership. The Leadership Circle is linked to organisational performance based on the principle that an organisation cannot perform at a level higher than the level of its individual leaders and Leadership groups.

The Leadership Circle Profile (LCP) measures two primary leadership domains - Creative leadership competencies and Reactive tendencies. In general, Creative styles have a positive correlation to success in leadership and to high organisational performance. Reactive styles, when overdone, come at a cost, and ultimately inhibit performance. A Creative leader is operating at a higher development level than those coming predominantly from a Reactive space. While leaders using Reactive leadership styles may declare some laudable aims and will generally produce some results, Reactive styles come with a counterbalancing negative impact. Controlling, for example, tends to get results, but at the cost of relationships, burnout and turnover. Overuse of this style destroys the potential benefits of building empowered self-directed teams who will produce better results than any leader can through their own ‘Controlling’ personal effort. Most leaders in most organisations across the world still operate largely at a Reactive level, meaning that they cannot effectively support their organisations to meet the challenges of the business environment of today.

The Leadership Circle Profile is the only competency based 360° profile that measures these two primary leadership domains of Creative competencies and Reactive tendencies.  And unlike most assessments that measure only specific competencies, their Leadership Circle Profile reveals to leaders and managers what they are doing, why they are doing it, and what actions they can take to lift their leadership to a higher level. The associated report integrates the information so that the key opportunities and directions for development are apparent. Leaders who are over-doing any of the Reactive styles can quickly gain insight into the cost that such overuse involves, and the opportunity to revise their style to use more Creative methods that are more satisfying and effective. Where the report identifies gaps between a leader’s (or team’s) current style and optimum styles, learning how to implement the LCP model will be transformational, and will then inspire and enable higher-level performance and support for strategy and change from direct reports as well as from peers across the organisation, and external stakeholders where relevant.

In one indication of how comprehensive the model is, some of the key dimensions of the Creative half of the Leadership Circle map strongly onto the emotional intelligence frameworks referred to below – but the further dimensions and deeper content mean the LC framework doesn’t stop there. The LC model also covers much of the area that's the focus of transformational leadership models (also below). It does address a gap though in the transformational leadership model, bring stronger attention to the pros as well as cons of transactional leadership styles, all within a more comprehensive theoretical framework that points more deeply to the inherent development issues apparent in any profile from perspectives including psychology, organisational structure and strategy. More information on the LCP can be provided on request. The chart above is a sample profile.

Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence involves a set of competences that can be learnt - and almost anyone can get better at using it. EI at the most basic level involves understanding emotions in ourselves and others, and effectively managing our emotional states while influencing those of others. Daniel Goleman, a major populariser of EI, says that a leader’s mood and accompanying behaviours are such potent drivers of business success that a leader’s premier or primal task—is emotional leadership. A leader needs to make sure that not only are they regularly in an optimistic, authentic, high-energy mood, but also that, through their chosen actions, their followers feel and act that way, too. Managing for performance begins with the leader managing their inner life so that the right emotional and behavioural chain reaction occurs. In ‘Working with Emotional Intelligence’, Goleman outlines the ‘Social Skills’ aspects of EI, and describes this area as ‘adeptness at inducing desirable responses in others’. He says this includes the areas of Influence: wielding effective tactics for persuasion, Communication: listening openly and sending convincing messages, Conflict management: negotiating and resolving disagreements a Leadership: inspiring and guiding individuals and groups, Change catalyst: initiating or managing change, Building bonds: nurturing instrumental relationships, Collaboration and cooperation: working with others toward shared goals, and Team capabilities: creating group synergy in pursuing collective goals.

Transformational Leadership

It has been demonstrated time and again that a leader using a ‘transformational’ approach, balanced with the right levels of 'transactional' behaviour and virtually no passive or avoidant behaviour, inspires those working above, below and around them to produce better results regarding levels of effort, effectiveness and to be more satisfied. As well as setting performance expectations and managing against these, transformational leaders inspire, motivate, challenge and coach. We can show you how, and getting it right is what delivers performance beyond expectations.

Our experience supporting your leadership programs

Atwork's principal consultant Paul Murphy is fully accredited in:

• the Leadership Circle assessment and development process for individuals and leadership teams;
• the MLQ leadership development system - the best system specifically aimed at assessing and build transformational leadership (however in most circumstances now we would recommend the Leadership Circle model as more advanced and comprehensive).
• the EQi-2.0 and EBW systems for measuring and developing emotional intelligence.
• the Team Management Profile (we'd recommend this if you might otherwise want a MBTI-type approach.

How do you lead a team of leaders? How well does a team of leaders communicate together, and follow when needed? Research and experience tells us that it is not always optimal. Leadership teams typically consist of people who are attracted to directing and leading others. When you get a roomful of such people, important aspects of communicating – listening for example – can suffer. This of course depends on the level of leadership capacity; the best leaders will also be able to work together highly effectively when this is needed. And increasingly, it is needed.

Even good leadership teams of great individuals can massively improve their impact by improving the way they work together.

Our ‘teams at the top’ program does just that. We identify the key team issues, work with you to map the ideal team culture, and set up the mechanisms that will help make that happen.

Organisational hierarchies are becoming flatter. Research by the NBER found that over the last two decades CEOs have increased the number of managers who report directly to the top with a reduction in the ranks of middle managers. This puts those middle managers who remain, and frontline managers, in positions of more demand.

Managers as a result now tend to have more authority, and are required to be more effective strategists and decision-makers.

They are now expected to approach and understand their daily work of managing from a more global perspective - demonstrating corporate knowledge beyond the traditional scope of internally-focussed manager roles.

While it's potentially rewarding, this can also be beyond the current capacity of some. If this is the case, the organisation suffers. Managers in this situation need help, through a development program we can help you with.

One primary function of a leader or manager is to inspire, encourage and help their people perform. But not many do it well. In fact a recent Forbes article noted that 46 percent of upper-level managers admit they fall short in the area of “Holds people accountable—firm when they don’t deliver.”

Part of the problem is that while we associate a management appointment with progressing within our organisation; not all people are naturally cut out for managing, and for some learning the skills and making the transition might be too big a leap.

Performance management is demanding in that it does require some rigor as well as skill. But it is really what management is all about – producing good performance in others.

And most people who are skilled enough technically to be appointed to a management role and have the ability to learn, can also learn to be a better manager.

Managing for performance is not just simply a matter of telling people to be accountable. And micromanagement (tight direction and close monitoring of performance) is never highly effective and usually comes at a great cost as it has a negative impact on the discretionary effort of most people. A better approach is the one that leads, inspires, and empowers while supporting and directing towards strategic outcomes.

Leaders and managers often get stuck on managing performance, and particularly on managing under-performance. In fact in many organisations these two are confused!

Ah, but feedback… How do you feel when someone asks you ‘would you like some feedback?’ While some robust characters might welcome it, most feel something akin to those footsteps behind you in a dark alley at night. Past experience or anecdotal knowledge tells many of us that the forthcoming feedback is not likely to be positive. The result is that the classical ‘fight or flight’ reflex is triggered. The amygdala - the brain’s integrative center for emotions, emotional behavior, and motivation but also the structure at the center of most brain events associated with fear - kicks in. Suddenly no-one is listening actively let alone listening to learn, even if the intentions were good. And the intentions of providing the feedback, if the were good, tend to get lost, and at worst relationships can be damaged. Feedback needs to be handled professionally and with care – and very much positively if an ongoing successful relationship is part of the goal.

These considerations are all important in managing performance at all levels – and they can be learnt. When used in together with accurate matching of individuals to roles, relevant Key Performance Indicators, reporting and reviewing, great leadership and a good performance management system is a pretty effective formula for helping individuals, teams and organisations get results.