Year end stock taking of leadership qualities
Gaston de ROSAYRO
The year is almost over. It is time to take stock. Salespeople and
many others live and die by the annual review. Auditors have built an
entire industry around it. For the next month, print and television
media will pour out gallons of coverage of the past year in review.
And yet, as leaders, we often move from one year to the next with
little or no time spent reviewing the year just past from a purely
leadership perspective. Every business, division, department, project,
group, or team ends the year with an often unspoken but widely accepted
narrative: “We messed it.” Or “We achieved it.” Or possibly: “Our
customer service team let us down.” And another such as: “The first
three quarters were a failure, but the fourth wasn’t too bad.”
Building trust |
Your mileage will vary. As the leader, it is your job to understand
what narrative has taken hold in your team and to manage it accordingly.
This isn’t the same as PR or spin. Managing the narrative isn’t about
manipulating what people think. It’s about knowing what has taken root
in your team’s perception and helping the team members understand its
importance.
So as this year closes, what narrative has your group or team
subliminally adopted? How accurate is it? Do you need to amplify or
clarify any of it? Does it need to be discussed as a group? What lessons
can you all learn from the narrative?
Next week, we will put up the Christmas tree in our house, and as
always, the final thing we’ll do is to straighten the angel at the top.
Whether you’ve had your best year ever or the worst year imaginable,
some, probably all, of your top performers will have been bent out of
shape getting you through it.
Some of them will have developed less than helpful traits - of
arrogance, perhaps, or gruffness, or maybe just thoughtlessness. Some
will be harbouring grudges or feeling hurt or confused. Others may have
been blindsided by events and are finishing the year off their game. One
or two may simply be exhausted.
Planning on business |
They are your angels. You are their leader. You need to go and
straighten them out. In the course of any year, you will encounter a
whole lot of individual and group dynamics that lose efficacy and that
only you can un-tether. There may be several practices that have become
outdated, policies that no longer work. There could also be routines,
rituals, and habits that now just get in the way and meetings that have
lost their purpose.
Ask for nominations of less-than-useful activities from your team,
but make the final decision yourself. And make everyone’s life simpler
by culling those that truly yield no ongoing benefit.
During the year, you and your team will undoubtedly have used up one
or more of the staples of healthy group interaction, such as energy,
perhaps, or enthusiasm. Maybe as a team you have lost a sense of fun,
humour, or maybe you’ve run short on objectivity or perspective.
Respecting employees |
Take a moment and think about it. Again, take soundings from your
colleagues. One way or another, you don’t want to start the new year
with one or more of those staples missing from your team’s pantry.
When you have identified which is missing or has run down to
dangerously low levels, think through how to restock in the next couple
of weeks. Can you give the holiday retreat or your end-of-year address a
theme? Do you need to give your folks some mentoring or coaching or
training? Or just a rest or a new perspective?
So as we begin a new year and examine what new challenges and
opportunities lie ahead, it’s a good time for all businesses to take
stock and ensure that they have the right processes in place to
effectively manage their business in 2013.
It’s worth noting that while planning will help to keep your business
one step ahead, there will be some events that are completely
unexpected.
The first step in preparing for the unexpected is to identify a
comprehensive list of risks facing the business. At the start of this
process, it’s an idea to schedule a risk mapping session involving all
the significant people in the business. Challenges are part of any
business, but they also present an opportunity to build trust with your
team and prove that honesty is truly a core value. Show your employees
you respect them enough to be frank about your challenges, and trust
them enough to give them new opportunities to re-invent or reinvigorate
the business.
Every business has setbacks. But helping create an atmosphere of
trust and collaboration to navigate through the rough patches pays rich
dividends. Just as the organisation itself can provide clues to how the
team operates, so does the behaviour of the team members. Do they behave
as though they were responsible for the success of the organisation and
their duties? Are they trying to be helpful to others on the team?
Examine your results for patterns. If people are willingly involved
and energetic, and if they get to use their creativity and talents to
solve problems for the team, then you are passing power along. On the
other hand, if you don’t empower team members and delegate to them, the
patterns will be different.
The only way you can be successful as a leader is to engage the
potential of everyone on your team. You must be ready, willing, and able
to recognise the value that each employee brings to the table. Everyone
will have different strengths and weaknesses, but each can play a
crucial role. Finally, what about you? How have you changed as a leader
this year? Do some soul-searching. Draw a line down the centre of a
page, and list in one column your defining characteristics at the start
of the year, and in the other, your defining characteristics at the end
of the year. How do the two lists differ, if at all?
Ask someone who knows you well to repeat the exercise, from his or
her perspective of you. How similar is his or her list to yours? As you
look at the two lists, which characteristic of yours most helped your
group or team this year? Which characteristic caused the most trouble?
When you have decided, ask your team members if they agree. You may be
surprised by how differently they view which characteristics are your
strong points and which are weaknesses.
By using common courtesies, you demonstrate you respect the people
with whom you are dealing. Even if you don’t work in a customer service
job, keep an attitude of customer service. Your colleagues and, more
importantly, your superiors will begin to realize you are a go-to person
if you’re almost always pleasant.
Next year, how can you do more of the first characteristic and less
of the second? To run a company, you of course need to delegate, but
pick your spots and continue to roll up your sleeves and get dirty.
You’ll see the entire organization follow that lead.
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