Thanks for reflecting your views on the previous post. Here are some of my reflections.
I think, the difference lies in the approach towards some of the key leadership functions.
Lets take some examples:
- Approach to “being accepted”: Leaders can no longer rely on Hierarchy to get acceptability. It is leader’s personal expertise and recognized excellence in an area of business value, which followers believe deserve respect and worthy of providing platform to lead.
- Approach to “being heard”: Directive style memos don’t work anymore beyond minimal compliance. Two way dialogue, that is authentic, persuasive, consistent across channels while being open to questioning with leader as facilitator and final integrator of views seems to work.
- Approach to “getting things done”: It is no more about detailed instructions about “how” it is to be done, but greater focus on telling “what needs to be done’ and “why it is important?”
- Approach to “getting best out of those led”: Traditional means of Motivating them to do what they are not convinced about, wont work. Connect work to their passion and then work relentlessly to avoid organization bureaucracy, and politics act as de-motivating distractions.
- Approach to “handling failures”: Instead of being criticized for being careless and unprofessional, leaders are expected to emphasize upon lessons learnt and may celebrate the well intentioned experimentations.
Lets Reflect!
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ReplyDeleteApproach to “self awareness”: A leader should be aware of his abilities and the impact that they have on others. It is important for a leader to recognize how he affects things and anticipate how others will react to his decisions and personality.
ReplyDeleteOn a separate note, the following are the U.S. Army's Eleven Leadership Principles that I picked up from the web:
- Be tactically and technically proficient
- Know yourself and seek self-improvement
- Know your soldiers and look out for their welfare
- Keep your soldiers informed
- Set the example
- Ensure the task is understood, supervised and accomplished
- Train your soldiers as a team
- Make sound and timely decisions
- Develop a sense of responsibility in your subordinates
- Employ your unit in accordance with its capabilities
- Seek responsibility and take responsibility for your actions
Hi,
ReplyDeleteIn terms of getting things done, leaders also need to focus on developing an approach for deriving best results through collective efforts of their followers. Apart from better outcomes, it will also result in fostering innovation within the organization.
This is also interlinked to other types of approach like "getting best out of those led" and "handling failures.
www.elsua.net/2006/09/20/job-counseling-on-knowledge-management
ReplyDeleteThis is the link for my blog.
I think the cartoon on this blog completely incapsulates this post.
Thanks
Thanks for your comments. Indeed being self-aware is one of the key foundtational competencies fo being an effective leader.
ReplyDeleteActually, my hypothesis is that being self-aware is now easier than befoe, provided you have the intention to discover. Present set of collegues and team members are increasingly more explicit in voicing their views and providing the unadulterated feedback. Also, with new social media options available, one can gather inputs from multiple sources and invote comments in most anonymous manner.
As we dive deeper into understanding the kind changes in the traditional approaches that the future leaders should adopt to ensure higher success rates in achieving results, another one that comes to my mind is leaders "adopting a persuasive approach" in dealing with their followers which is far more in acceptance now than the traditional "command and control" way of management.
ReplyDeleteThe ability to use persuasion & influence
will be extremely helpful in not only moving organizations & people forward but also inspiring your followers to reach out for the STARS.
As I see it, persuasion and influence can also be best used by the leaders to help their people take up ownership and gain trust in their work and their team.