Hearts and Minds: Leaders and Managers in the workplace
Lynda Gratton, Professor of Management at the London Business School, was awarded the prize of twelfth most influential living Global Management figure and the most highly placed UK expert on the subject at the annual Thinkers 50 Award on November 15th.
Her most recent work, ‘’The Shift’’ was published earlier this year. In this she wrote ‘’These are exciting times. There are forces at work that, over the next decade, will fundamentally shift what we take for granted about employees, work and organisations. We live at a time when the schism with the past is of the same magnitude as that last seen in the Industrial Revolution.’’ She goes on to add, ‘’What we do, where we do it, how we work and with whom will change, possibly unrecognisably, in our lifetimes.’’
In these stirring times, and up and down the length and breadth of United Kingdom PLC, thousands of companies and organisations, both great and small, are encountering or going through the need for often radical and painful change. Whatever the size or the scale of the organisation affected, the fundamental issues are often markedly similar.
People often find themselves in leadership roles without having thought about what this means and what they need to do to succeed. People usually enter a profession or job area because they want to do things related to the subject, whether it is law, medicine, charity work, IT or carpentry. So, how do managers become leaders? This has proved a significant problem area for many British organisations.
Organisations exist to turn resources into something of value, whether it’s turning steel and other substances into cars, or public money via taxes and levies into safe and clean environments, or charitable donations into medical research or better life experiences for certain communities. The more effective the process management is, the better the organisational performance will be.
But when it becomes not just a matter of managing the process efficiently, but getting the whole team to do so, to understand and believe in the end goal and to feel engaged, then leadership skills come into play. Senior managers therefore need both skill sets. It is people who manage processes, so managers who foster environments in which people feel an emotional connection to the performance goals achieve superior results and, at the same time, reach a superior level of self and collective validation. In fact, they lead. They encourage performance rather than policing it.
The lesson for would-be leaders is clear. Success is very much about connecting the emotions of the staff you lead with your organisational processes and the results that are required. It means there is the opportunity to influence the satisfaction and validation that your staff and other stakeholders gain from a key part of their lives – their working lives!
Consider this example: two managers, both wishing to take a consultative approach to their roles, have an open door policy and have taken time to foster a consultative approach to problem-solving in their teams. One tells his/her staff what to do when approached with a problem for co-consultation; the second discusses the problem and helps his/her staff to decide what course of action is preferable.
After three months in post, the first manager is complaining that his/her staff cannot be trusted to do the work; they fail to take responsibility for issues, so as a last resort he/she has to take on what should be their work. What has actually happened is that the staff feel unsure and disempowered; as a result, they push everything upwards. In the case of the second manager, staff feel confident and supported, even when things go wrong. The manager is leading and there is a satisfying sense of working together.
For further information on how Catalyst Business Academy may be able to assist your organisation, please contact Greg Kirwan Business Development Manager at Greg.Kirwan@cbduk.biz
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