Archive for September, 2009

1. Strong fit in terms of personal and organisational values
2. You don’t have to micro manage people
3. People can distinguish between jobs and responsibilities
4. People deliver on commitments
5. People are passionate about the company and their work
6. People give credit to others

Bottom Line – Having the right team is vital to achieving success.  So how does your team measure up?

We commonly hear that people are seeking challenge in the work place.  Without doubt, your success as a leader you will be greatly influenced by your ability to bring out the best in others.  So as a leader what can you do to grow people?

Tip 1: Create the right environment

As the leader you can either create an environment where you encourage people to prosper and contribute or one where you keep everything fixed.  Which do you think would be more motivational for your people?  If you want people to grow, create the working environment where they can.

Tip 2: Set a vision and encourage others to do the same

So often in organisation’s people focus on what’s not possible to achieve.  In reality no matter the situation there are always possibilities available.  Clearly articulate your overall vision and encourage others to come up with their ideas on how they can make it happen.

Tip 3: Make some investment

When times are tough in organisations, developing people is often the first thing that is removed from the budget.  If the organisation is truly stuck for cash this might well be a necessary short term action.  However, as a leader, seek ways of providing opportunities for developing others.  Even low cost group events can make a big difference.

Tip 4: Provide opportunities for shadowing

If you have up and coming and talent in the organisation, why not provide them with opportunities to shadow someone at a more senior level for a day or even half day.  This can be a really effective way of giving someone the real opportunity to get some insights into a more senior level role.

Tip 5: Create a system of mentoring

Mentors are essentially experienced people who have achieved what you want to achieve and help you achieve it. They act as advisors, buddies and supporters who help others to get where they want to.

Bottom Line – There are many advantages from talent retention, to motivation of growing your people.  So what steps could you take as a leader to get better at growing your people?

It is often said that people are an organisation’s greatest asset and in many organisations this is certainly true.  One thing that is certain is that recruiting someone is a major investment decision.  If you are a manager, are you viewing it this way?  Think about it, imagine you hire someone on a modest salary of £20,000 and the average time in post is 3 years.   You are in effect making a £60,000 investment decision.  Given the scale of the investment, how can you start making great recruitment decisions?

Tip 1: Know what you have 

Chances are you already have people in post.  What skills, experience, knowledge and attributes do they have?  Truth is few organisations take the time to even consider this.  Instead they jump straight into what they need.  Take the time to review what you currently have as the first step of the process.

Tip 2: Know what you need

In determining what you need, think about what you already have.  You also need to consider what the organisation or team is going to need over the coming years.  You should also be thinking about the overall business strategy and think about recruiting people who will contribute to achieving the strategy.

Tip 3: Provide good candidate briefings

Too often organisations dust down an old job description and send candidate’s one sheet of A4 with company information.  While this is better than nothing ask yourself what would you want to know if you were a potential applicant for the job?

Tip 4: Plan the selection process

Interviews are still by far the most common way of selecting people.  However, it might be worth adding extra activities especially if you are looking for particular skills.  This might be for example a presentation, writing a report, creating a spreadsheet or even a group role play.  Consider the role and the things that the successful candidate will need and use this to inform the best selection process.

Tip 5: If in doubt don’t recruit

This is what I would say is the golden rule of recruitment.  If your intuition is telling you that for some reason a candidate is just not right, then don’t recruit.  It is better to take a little longer to find the right person than appoint someone who only stays a few months.

Bottom Line – Recruiting a member of staff is a major recruitment decision. So what changes do you need to make to achieve more success as a manager when it comes to recruiting?

We all probably have our own views about leadership.  While it is true that we might all have slightly different views, I wonder if you are falling into the trap of believing 5 of the most common leadership myths.

Leadership Myth 1: Leaders are born

Now I don’t know about you but I have yet to hear about a newborn that was blessed with the leadership gene.  Sure certain qualities help when it comes to leadership but these are developed rather than being acquired at birth.

Leadership Myth 2: You need to be mean

You might have a perception that being a success in a leadership relies on you being the tough guy or gal.  Yes you need to be resilient and be able to stand your ground from time to time.  You might even need to quite tough at times.  However, being mean is a sure-fire way to leadership failure rather than success.

Leadership Myth 3: Success is all about having the opportunity

While having a great academic record might give you a head start, don’t fall into the trap that if you didn’t have the opportunity to go to college or university you cannot get into leadership.  For example, I left school at 16 with minimal qualifications.  I started going to college while working and was able to climb the career ladder from Accounts Clerk to Finance Director.

Leadership Myth 4: You can take your foot off the gas

Moving into leadership for the first time is the biggest career step you will take.  If you think that when you reach this level you have made it and can take your foot off the gas, you are in for a shock.  Truth is when you move into leadership you need to invest even more in your continuing development as you are having to deal with many new and different challenges.

Leadership Myth 5: You need to keep collecting qualifications

Research suggests that your level of intelligence (IQ) will take you so far in your career but it is your interpersonal and social skills (EQ) that really determines your success.  If you are considering taking additional qualifications, ask yourself what difference they will make.  It may be that investing in developing you skills and qualities through coaching or short courses will provide better results.

Bottom Line – Moving into leadership is a major step.  So what myths are you buying into that are getting in the way of achieving leadership success?

As a leader one of your key roles is to set out the overall direction for the organisation over the medium to long term.  Pick up any textbook and it might seem like the easiest thing in the world to do.  Yet in reality it is often an area of real struggle.  Why is this and what can you do about it?

Challenge 1: Spending sufficient time

As a leader or leadership team you are making major choices and decisions that have a impact on:

• The organisation
• You
• Employees
• Customers or service users
• Suppliers
• Shareholders and stakeholders

Yet often leadership teams spend far too little time on this vital area. You might be familiar with or even participated in a one or two day away day where you spend time looking at the future direction.  While this is a useful starting point, it has many limitations.

Solution: Schedule sufficient time to develop strategy and make it a rolling process where time is taken out at least every 2-3 months to keep the strategy relevant and up to date.

Challenge 2: Answering key questions

All organisations exist for some reason or other.  In developing strategy there is a great temptation for people to come up with aspirations that may or may not be linked to the core purpose.  This might be due to key questions not being identified and answered.

Solution:  Start any discussion around strategy by getting clear answers to the following key questions:

• What are we here to do as an organisation?

• Who are we doing it for?

• What results do we want to deliver for our stakeholders?
Challenge 3: Connecting strategies

There clearly needs to be an overall direction in which the organisation is heading and top level goals.  At the same time the sub-strategies for Finance, Marketing, IT, Customer Relationship Management, Production, etc need to be connected.

Solution:  As well as being crystal clear about the overall direction and goals, make sure that there are detailed sub-strategies to achieve the goals which are consistent and joined up.

Bottom Line – In theory creating and implementing effective strategy is simple but in practice is extremely challenging.  So what challenges do you need to address to develop and implementing even better strategies?

Being a leader can be a really lonely existence.  Expectations are high and it can often be a real struggle to stay on top of your game and continually deliver great results.  Continuing to develop as a leader has never been so vital not least because of the major challenges facing many organisations right now.

For those at a more senior level working with a coach or mentor is often a great way of continuing to develop.  So what are the benefits?

Benefit 1: Thinking time

The pace at which leaders operate in organisations is often relentless and means that there is little or no time to stand back and take stock.  Being able to stand back from issues and challenges allows you to clearly think through the choices, look at challenges in different ways and ultimately to take better decisions.  And if you are taking better decisions it means better results for you personally and the organisation.

Benefit 2: Ongoing support

Training is great and I have been to many great training courses over the years.  Trouble is most training courses are a one shot opportunity.  What I mean by that is that you go along to the course, leave enthusiastic and an few months later find you are back where you started.  If you are a leader looking to be more effective over the long term you know that it is going to take time.  Having that ongoing support can help you make that sustained change in performance.

Benefit 3: Personal attention

In my experience of working with clients there are often some very specific areas of focus that leaders and managers want to work on.  Sometimes it might be about strategies and tactics that they can apply and other times it might be tackling areas of self doubt or misconceptions.  I also notice that they rarely need to work on all aspects of a particular topic but more on one or two areas.   The nature of the relationship means that it is much easier to tailor the programme to meet specific needs.

Benefit 4: Highly time efficient

I know that when I was in leadership and management roles, creating the time to attend a 2 or 3 day course was often a real challenge.  By comparison finding a couple of hours a month to work with a coach was much more time efficient and effective.

Benefit 5: Return on Investment

Ultimately if you are investing time, money and energy into something the return on what you have invested will be important.  Research into the benefits of coaching indicates that the return on investment is in the region of 500-700%.  Now these numbers might well look huge but let’s take a look at an example.  Imagine you are a senior manager who aspires to be a Director.  Ask yourself what’s the difference in salary and benefits?  In a field like accountancy, the differential between a number one and number two can easily be in the £30-50,000 per annum range.  If you are in the number one job for say 10 years, that could mean an extra £300-£500,000 to your earnings.  So look at your investment in terms of the lifetime value.

Bottom Line – Continuing to develop as a leader is no longer an optional extra.  If you are serious about realising your professional and personal potential, working with a coach or mentor might just be the catalyst.

It might not be the most exciting thing that you do as a leader but achieving success relies on you having an effective system of measuring progress.  Think about it, if you are measuring something it is on your radar and if it is on your radar you are more likely to be alert to opportunities to move forward to the next level.

So how can you start to make measurement a valuable business tool rather than just a chore where you tick boxes?

Get clear on your goals
 
If you are going to be effective at measuring something you need to be crystal clear about what you are trying to achieve in the first place.  When designing any form of measurement system whether at organisation, function, team, project, process or even individual level, make sure you are crystal clear on the goals, results and outcomes you want.

Distinguish between the essentials and nice to have

In any organisation there are certain things that are so essential to your success that you really need to pay attention to them.  You probably have heard of the 80:20 rule.  In essence 20% of what you do delivers 80% of the results.  In any organisation it is vital that you determine what the 20% is and then focus your measurement around this area.   So what’s the 20% in your organisation?

Make everyone responsible

You may have people centrally who crunch the numbers or provide the reports but ultimately achieving goals needs to the responsibility of everyone.  The best systems of measuring performance were those that cascaded objectives and goals right down to individual employee level.

Don’t just rely on financial measures

Financial measures have their place and need to be part of what they measure but don’t rely on them in isolation.  The reason is that most financial measures are after the event.  They tell you retrospectively what has happened.  Take something like turnover (sales) as example.  Sure it tells you how much income you have generated from sales but the real nuggets are in understanding the drivers and blockers of sales.

Bottom Line – Measuring if it is to make a difference to personal and organisational success needs to focus on measuring what matters.  So what action can you take to use measurement to create more success?

As a leader you will have the role of leading what may well be a very large team of people.  With more organisations now operating across the globe, you may well find that you are also having to lead a virtual team located hundreds or potentially thousands of miles from where you are based.  So what are my 8 top tips for leading teams?

Tip 1: Set clear goals or outcomes

If your team or teams are to achieve anything they need to have absolute clarity on what you expect them to deliver in terms of goals or outcomes.  While in theory this might seem simple, too often leaders fall into the trap of setting very vague or ambiguous goals.  To overcome this start by getting clear about what you want to be different 1, 3 or even 5 years from now and then narrow it down to a very clear purpose.

Tip 2: Facilitate more and direct less

As the leader of the team, think of yourself as the conductor of the orchestra rather than the person playing an instrument. Your role is to bring out the best from everyone in the team so that you get optimal performance and results.

Tip 3: Learn to listen

We were all given two ears and one mouth.  Yet often you would think that it was the other way round.  Don’t fall into the trap as the leader of the team of spending all of your time talking and little or none getting the contributions of others.

Tip 4: Reward team rather than individual performance

If someone is going to be rewarded just for what they do individually, what incentive is there to contribute to team performance?  Aim to create reward structures that mean that if the team wins, everyone wins rather than being narrowly focused on individuals.

Tip 5: Be consistent

All leaders have their own style which is to be expected.  At the same time it is important as a team member to have some sort of consistency in leadership style.  There is nothing worse in having to guess what leader has turned up on a particular day so try to be as consistent as possible.

Tip 6: Be a role model

As the team leader you set the tone for the rest of the team.  How you behave, how you interact, how you deal with difficulties and conflict will all impact on the team.  Decide on the tone you want to set then model that for others.

Tip 7: Provide opportunity

One of the big attractions of being on a team is that you often get the chance to work with different people or to take on new challenges.  Use this as an opportunity to grow and develop people.

Tip 8: Take responsibility and praise others

When things don’t go according to plan, take responsibility and don’t seek to apportion blame.  When things go well don’t grab the glory and make appoint of praising others.

Bottom Line – Leading a team looks easy yet in truth it is hugely challenging.  So what do you need to be doing to create more success as a team leader?

You have reached a landmark in your career when you first move into a leadership role.  Chances are that it is something that you have been working towards for a long period of time.  The challenge having reached this landmark in your career is how to achieve long term sustained success.

Smart leaders recognise that achieving any kind of long term success depends on getting people to help you to deliver results consistently.  So how do you go about getting others on board?

Tip 1: Be clear about the destination

The first vital step in getting others on side is having a very clear but simple message about the direction that you aspire to take the organisation.  With any new leader people are understandably apprehensive about the future.  Being able to articulate the overall goal is a vital starting point.

Tip 2: Be willing to listen

At the end of you day everyone realises that you have to way up all of the options and take a decision.  After all this is what you are paid to do.  At the same time, people like to have the opportunity to contribute their views and ideas so make a point of listening.

Tip 3: Articulate the benefits

If you are going to be making change people need to understand the benefits.  What difference is it going to make are the changes going to make for:

• Individual employees

• Departments or functions

• Customers or service users

• Suppliers

• Shareholders or stakeholders

People and groups want to know that they will be contributing to making something better.

Tip 4: Don’t expect complete support

You might have heard the saying that turkeys don’t vote for Christmas.  In any situation there will always be people who will always vote for the do nothing option.  Accept this and don’t try to strong arm them into a particular way of thinking.

Tip 5: Promote the successes and the learning

Make a point of highlighting things that others have done that have worked out well.  At the same time be willing to openly discuss what did not work out and what was learned.  By adopting this approach you will encourage people to have a go and try to achieve.

Bottom Line – Always remember that to achieve success as a leader, you need to get others on board.  So what do you need to start doing more to increase your chances of leadership success?

If you are a professional who is seeking to secure a leadership role there might be the temptation to rely totally on your technical expertise.  Yet in truth, if you are applying for a senior level role, your technical competence will almost be taken for granted.  So if it is not your technical competence that you need to demonstrate what is it?

Self awareness

Being aware of what you do best and what needs developing is essential for success as a leader.  In addition, you need to be aware of how your behaviours and style impact on others as your ability to influence is a huge contributor to the results you achieve.

What makes you different from everyone else?

If all of the candidates can do the technical aspects of the job to a broadly similar level, what is it that you bring to the table that sets you apart from everyone else?  Spending time thinking about the 3-5 things that you believe are unique about you is time well invested.

You are a team player

Chances are, unless it is a start up company is that you will be joining an already established team.  Those recruiting need to be comfortable that you are going to successfully integrate into the team and build relationships with colleagues.

Strategic thinking

As part of the leadership team you are no longer just the expert in a particular discipline.  You need to be able to see the bigger picture and maybe even break down some prejudices that you have about other professional groups. Remember that a big part of your role is to drive the organisation forward so the ability to think creatively and come up with innovations and ideas is vital.

Long term potential

Few people will be able to tick all of the boxes in terms of skills, experience and attributes but you need to be able to show that you have long term potential to grow and develop.

You will be a good ambassador for the organisation

You need to be able to represent the organisation well internally and even externally, particularly if you are working in a public body.

Bottom Line – Breaking through the career glass ceiling is less about technical competence and more about your ability to inspire and influence others.  So where do you need to develop to achieve your professional potential?