Leaders and followers
From PLN
Leaders and followers
You can't really be a leader if nobody's following you. These notes cover a range of aspects of the relationships between leaders and followers.
Leader's Digest
by Leslie Dillon
"Creative leadership"
Research demonstrates that there is definitely a link between an organization's work environment and the quality of its creative problem solving. Here's how to create a work environment that incubates novel ideas and value-added innovations:
- Establish clear goals and then let your people find their own way to them.
- Monitor your staff's work—-at a distance.
- Clarify roles and objectives.
- Recognize and reward good work.
- Support people.
- Facilitate your staff's work.
- Create fruitful idea-generation and idea-evaluation processes.
- Separate idea generation from idea evaluation.
- Aim for quantity with idea generation.
- Seek connections.
- During evaluation, apply affirmative judgment and check your objectives.
(Judith A. Ross, "Creative leadership: Be your team’s Chief Innovation Officer", Harvard Management Update, March 2007.)
Persuading through negotiation and compromise
Effective leaders are skilled at persuading others to get things done. This includes not only getting better results from your direct reports (influencing performance), but also "greater cooperation from your peers (lateral leadership), and stronger support from your own boss and senior management (persuasion)." Successful persuasion is a multi-step process:
1. Establish credibility. "Credibility comes from expertise (sound judgment and successes) and relationships (ability to listen and work in others' best interests)."
- To bolster your expertise:
- Get the expertise you need through formal and informal education.
- Hire recognized, outside experts.
- Launch small pilot programs.
- To fill relationship gaps:
- Meet one-on-one with key people.
- Involve like-minded coworkers who have a proven track record.
2. Frame your goals on common ground. Your audience must understand how these goals will benefit them.
3. Present vivid evidence to support your position.
4. Connect emotionally with your audience.
- Learn how similar events have been interpreted in the past to help gauge what the response will be.
- Test key individuals' reactions to your proposal.
- Adjust your emotional tone when you present a proposal to match your audience's ability to receive your message.
("Persuading through Negotiation and Compromise," eLearning Alert from Harvard Business School, Mar. 5, 2007.)
What your leader expects of you
How do you to promote effective leader-follower relationships in your team? The author of this article, Larry Bossidy, suggests "forging a boss-subordinate compact that defines a mutual set of crystal-clear expectations." As a direct report, your boss expects you to to offer your creative ideas. As the boss, your staff expects you to "tell your people where the [organization] is going, why, and how they’ll benefit if they accomplish key goals." Additional expectations in the boss-subordinate compact include:
- As a subordinate:
- Get involved. Step in the moment someone falls behind in their commitments, when an interpersonal conflict occurs, and when a crisis erupts. Deliver bad news to your boss yourself.
- Collaborate. Overcome differences between you and others so you can work together effectively.
- Lead initiatives. Be willing to associate yourself with unproven ideas. "Raise your hand, and you’ll climb the ladder faster than those who don’t."
- Develop your own people. Take an active interest in your staff's development. "Go out of your way to criticize and praise your people when they need it. And get directly involved in performance reviews, supplying people with specific, candid, and useful feedback."
- Stay current. "Know what’s going on with your customers—how they’re changing, how their competition is changing, and how technology and world events are affecting" them.
- Drive your own growth. "Seek perpetual education and development... Seek feedback from your boss, and accept demanding assignments."
- As a leader:
- Define specific goals for your staff. Specify what you expect from them as a team and as individuals. This will "help them decide where to invest their energy and time."
- Be available. If you expect your staff to stay up to date and keep you informed, "be accessible when they need to see you." And don’t make it hard on them if they bring you bad news.
- Compensate employees fairly. Ensure that people understand how the compensation system works.
(Lawrence A. Bossidy, "What your leader expects of you," Harvard Business Review, April 2007. Available on EBSCOhost's Business Source Premier; or you can order a reprint from HBR for $6.00.)
What great managers do
This is from Harvard Business Online’s summary of a full-length article in Harvard Business Review.
The author urges managers to capitalize on their employees’ strengths. Rather than trying to change employees, managers need to “identify [employees’] unique abilities (and even their eccentricities)--then help them use those qualities to excel in their own way.”
Try these three tactics:
- Tweak roles to capitalize on individual strengths. E.g., a “store manager put a laconic but highly organized employee in charge of restocking aisles—freeing up more sociable employees to serve customers.”
- Activate employees’ strengths. “Offer incentives such as time spent with you, opportunities to work independently, and recognition in forms each employee values.”
- Tailor coaching to learning styles. Give “analyzers” the information they need before they start a task. Let “doers” start with simple tasks, then gradually increase the difficulty. Let “watchers” observe your most experienced performers.
First, you’ll need to identify employees’ unique strengths as well as their weaknesses. Next, have the employee partner with another staff member with complementary talents. Then reconfigure assignments to neutralize weaknesses.
(From Marcus Buckingham, “What great managers do,” HBR in Brief, Harvard Business Online, Aug. 7, 2007.)
The CEO's role in leading transformation
“A CEO who pays only lip service to a transformation will find everyone else doing the same.” CEOs can successfully lead transformative change in four ways:
- Make the transformation meaningful. “People will go to extraordinary lengths for causes they believe in, and a powerful transformation story will create and reinforce their commitment.” CEOs need to be willing “to make the transformation personal, to engage others openly, and to spotlight successes as they emerge.”
- Role-model desired mind-sets and behavior. “Successful CEOs typically embark on their own personal transformation journey. Their actions encourage employees to support and practice the new types of behavior.”
- Build a strong, committed top team. “CEOs must make tough decisions about who has the ability and motivation to make the journey.”
- Relentlessly pursue impact. CEOs need to roll up their sleeves and get personally involved when significant value is at stake, and to hold leaders accountable.
The full article has some good examples of how several top CEOs have implemented these key functions.
(Carolyn B. Aiken and Scott P. Keller, “The CEO’s role in leading transformation,” The McKinsey Quarterly, Aug. 14, 2007, from Web exclusive, Feb. 2007.)
Are you delegating so it sticks?
As a manager, you’re aware of the importance of delegating responsibility to your subordinates and of the dangers of not doing so. But when you’re under intense pressure, sometimes it seems easier to take on someone else’s problem than to help them solve it themselves. Today, with 80% of the value added to goods and services coming from knowledge work, delegating is more important than ever.
Here are a few tips from the experts on delegating:
- Make yourself let go. Let go of old assumptions that it’s faster and easier to take over a subordinate’s task, and that you know more than your direct reports do. Think like a leader, not like a manager. Managers manage details. Leaders manage people by encouraging their sense of ownership and accountability.
- Ask, don’t tell. Ask “What do you think should be done?” This helps staff come up with proposed solutions next time there’s a problem. And it saves time in the long run.
- Match tasks to people. Assign tasks and problems to your staff based on their capabilities and development needs. Delegate so that you help people stretch and “treat mistakes as growth opportunities.” Find out what your staff are most passionate about, and assign duties accordingly. When you do, people won’t need supervision, “they’ll generate creative solutions...on their own.”
- Cultivate independent thinking. The more employees think independently and feel a sense of ownership in their jobs, the fewer problems they’ll bring to their bosses.
- Link people with resources. Linking staff with the resources they need will reduce the number of problems they bring to you. “Think of resources in broad terms--as people, tools, information and developmental opportunities that can help employees resolve issues on their own.” Sometimes all that’s needed is to tell an employee to talk to someone in another area. Mentoring programs are also highly successful.
Your direct reports need to know the same things you “know if they’re going to make smart decisions and solve their own problems.”
(Lauren Keller Johnson, “Are you delegating so it sticks?,” Harvard Management Update, Sept. 2007. Available from EBSCOhost Business Source Premier or from Harvard Business Online for $4.50.)
How great managers manage people
An article from a past issue of Harvard Management Update came to my attention recently; it’s still highly relevant, and I’ve summarized it below.
Great managers “boost the engagement levels of the people who work for them.” But only 28% of U.S. employees are engaged. Engaged employees lead to engaged customers and a better organization. So how to keep a talented employee instead of driving him or her out of the organization or even the field? Great managers reject conventional wisdom in four core areas of managing people: selection, expectation setting, motivation and development.
- Selection. Great managers select employees for their talent, not for specific skills needed for a job. For example, all customer service representatives in a company receive the same training. But some are much better than others, and the best ones take 1/3 fewer calls than the others. “Why? Because they use the phone as a tool of intimacy--they can envision what the customer looks like, what room he is in; they smile and nod even though the customer cannot see what they are doing. Instinctively, their talent leads them to manage each customer relationship in the most effective manner.” Great managers seek out employees whose talents redefine how their jobs are done.
- Expectation setting. Rather than specifying steps needed to accomplish a task, great managers define desired outcomes and let each staff member use their individual talents to achieve them. Great managers “don’t let the steps obscure the focus on the outcome.”
- Motivation. Great managers focus on developing their employees’ unique strengths to help further their talent. “The key here is determining how to take greater advantage of what people already do well.”
- Development. Great managers rate an employee’s performance and develop the person, realizing that every person is unique and should be treated as such. Promotions aren’t necessarily the natural path for everyone. Great managers seek the right fit for a person, work to see that she or he is rewarded, and ensure that his or her talent is developed through increasingly meaningful assignments.
(Paul Michelman, “How great managers manage people,” Harvard Management Update, August 2004. Available from EBSCOhost Business Source Premier or from Harvard Business Online for $4.50.)
Infectious leadership
Michael Watkins, Professor of General Management at IMD in Lausanne, Switzerland and a leadership development consultant, believes that the senior leadership of every organization is truly viral. Their behaviors are passed down to each succeeding level. Over time, they permeate the organization from top to bottom, eventually becoming embodied in the organizational culture. The “infectious nature of leadership applies as much to good behaviors as to bad.”
Watkins invites managers to try the following experiment:
- Day 1: Enter smiling. Greet everyone cheerfully. Compliment people on work well done. “Accentuate the positive, even it if hurts.”
- Day 2: Enter frowning. Be irritable. Focus on problems and call people to account on the smallest details. “Accentuate the negative in every interaction.”
He believes you’ll be amazed at the difference in the atmospheres on each day. On Day 1, staff will likely “mirror your positive mood and energy levels will rise.” On Day 2, “it will be like you sucked the oxygen out the room.” Staff will be anxious and will try to figure out what’s wrong. Imagine what it’s like to work with leaders like these and the impact on their organizations.
“The implication? Leaders need to think hard about their viral impact on their organization. What kind of infectious agent do you want to be?”
(Michael Watkins, “Infectious leadership,” The Leading Edge, Harvard Business Online, Oct. 3, 2007.)
Making the shift from peer to boss
The greatest challenge for a new leader is “relationship re-engineering.” While the organization, culture, politics and players remain the same, all of the new leader’s relationships must and will change. How does the new leader make a successful transition? Management consultant Michael Watkins has seven basic principles behind re-engineering relationships:
- Establish authority deftly. Find the middle ground between under- and over-controlling, between being too chummy and too authoritarian.
- Focus on what’s good for the business. Be “hard on the issues and soft on the people.” Rely on “fair process” for making key decisions; i.e., establish and uphold work processes that are perceived as fair.
- Rethink what you delegate. The “ability to delegate lies at the heart of leadership.” What you delegate shifts dramatically once you’re promoted.
- Communicate, communicate, communicate. You and your former peers will share information differently now that you’re in a higher position. Establish a “climate of openness and a culture of ‘no surprises’.” Don’t punish people for sharing bad news or require them to have “iron-clad answers when they bring problems” to you.
- Reenlist your (good) former peers. Think “hard about when and how to best engage with disappointed direct reports.” Recognize individual’s contributions “elaborately” and show them you’re committed to helping them advance. When direct reports are not competent or can’t “support the new leader, the key is to help them find other opportunities.”
- Rethink your advice and counsel network. The network of people you rely on for advice and counsel will change as you rise in the organization. The higher you go, the more you’ll need sophisticated, supportive political advisers, both inside and outside your organization. You “may also need to develop entirely new sources of advice and counsel and rely less on existing ones.”
- Recognize that relationships have to change. “Finally, and perhaps most importantly, you must accept that one price of promotion is that personal relationships with former peers have to become less personal.”
(Michael Watkins, The Leading Edge, Harvard Business Online, Nov. 7, 2007.)
What every leader needs to know about followers
While countless studies examine leaders, there’s almost nothing written about followers. What little there is doesn’t distinguish between “those who tag along mindlessly...from those who are deeply devoted and consciously, actively involved.”
This article identifies five types of followers--followers being those who “are low in the hierarchy and have less power, authority, and influence than their superiors:”
- Isolates. Completely detached, scarcely aware of what’s going on around them; don’t know or care about their leaders; passively support the status quo with their inaction.
- Bystanders. Free riders, somewhat detached, observe but do not participate; deliberately stand aside and disengage from their leaders and from their organizations.
- Participants. Engaged enough to invest some of their own time and money to make an impact. Participants who support their managers are highly coveted. They are the fuel that drives the engine.
- Activists. Eager, energetic, highly engaged; heavily invested in people and process; feel strongly one way or another about their leaders and organizations; work hard either to support their leaders or to undermine--even unseat--them.
- Diehards. So engaged they’re willing to go down with the ship--or throw the captain overboard; exhibit an all-consuming dedication to someone or something. Diehard followers are rare and can be either a strong asset or a dangerous liability.
How can you tell a good follower from a bad one? “Followers who do something are nearly always preferred to followers who do nothing.”
Good followers actively support good (effective) leaders and oppose bad (ineffective, immoral) leaders. “Good followers invest time and energy in making informed judgments about who their leaders are and what they espouse. Then they take the appropriate action.”
Bad followers do nothing to contribute to the organization, or they oppose a good leader or support a bad leader.
Followers aren’t all alike, and they shouldn’t be treated as if they are. “And while they may lack authority, at least in comparison with their superiors, followers do not lack power and influence.”
(Barbara Kellerman, “What Every Leader Needs to Know About Followers,” Harvard Business Review, Dec. 2007.)
Management quick tip: How can I become better at delegating?
Delegation is a “basic” management skill that can be difficult to master. Executive coach Marshall Goldsmith suggests that you remember that your goal is “to delegate more effectively”, not more frequently. Delegate only to those who are ready to accept the challenge.
Goldsmith recommends that you schedule individual meetings with each of your direct reports. Ask each of them to list their key responsibilities. Then ask:
- Are there areas where I need to delegate more to you?
- Are there areas where I need to get more involved or provide more help to you?
Now you’re ready to tailor your delegation strategy to fit the unique needs of each staff member.
After you’ve gotten feedback on how you manage your managers, ask your staff how you manage yourself:
- Do you ever see me doing things that I don’t need to be doing?
- Can I let go of some of my work and give it to my staff members?
You’ll learn what tasks you’re actually wasting time on. “By delegating these activities to staff members you will simultaneously free up some of your own time for more strategic work and help develop staff members’ skills in the process.”
(Marshall Goldsmith, “Management Quick Tip: How Can I Become Better at Delegating?” Harvard Management Update, Dec. 2007.)
Ten management lessons
An organization’s greatest assets are its people. Entrepreneur Ryan Allis believes the “two most important things [to] look for when hiring are initiative and work ethic.” But once they’re hired, how should you manage these good people?
Here are ten tips:
- Have a vision and communicate it. No one follows a leader who can’t communicate how the organization will succeed. “Make sure your employees believe in your organization…”
- Show respect. Always treat your customers, vendors, partners, and employees with respect.
- Share your success. Provide whatever incentives you can.
- Don’t be too serious. Make business fun! Nothing beats a monthly lunchtime pizza party.
- Work with your employees. Be sure your staff sees you there working. People don’t like to work for someone who doesn’t work hard. “Especially early on, be the first to arrive and the last to leave whenever possible.”
- Keep your door open. “Make sure your [staff] know that you are approachable at any time about any problem…”
- Listen. Meet with your managers “at least every other week,” have frequent informal discussions with them and get their feedback.
- Build relationships. You need to know something about an employee’s out-of-office life in order to connect professionally with them.
- Praise more than you criticize. Too many managers “speak to an employee only when he or she has done something wrong. … [If you] only condemn and never praise, your employees will quickly either dislike you or show apathy toward their jobs.”
- Consciously build a culture. At Ryan Allis’ company they help fellow staff members move into a new house, give them rides home from the airport, etc. Their culture of helping exists because they have consciously built it.
As a manager, you “control the activity and purpose that your employees dedicate half of their waking hours to. … If you can succeed in building a team of highly motivated and happy employees who take initiative, have a bias toward action, respect you, and truly care for the business, you will have done much of the work toward building a strong and fast-growing organization.” (Ryan Allis, "10 management lessons," Sales & Marketing Management’s [http://www.managesmarter.com/msg/index.jsp ManageSmarter, Feb. 20, 2008. Excerpted from Zero to One Million,McGraw Hill, 2008)
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