DIANNE DURKIN suggests 5 strategies to improve organizational performance… Here are my thoughts on her five points:
1: Engage employees in discussion. This takes genuine initiative. We always think we are friendly but I think we are mostly self deceived on this. We pay lip service and make pleasantry – - we don’t really engage. To actually engage we usually need to set up a process, a formal process. We need to be able to draw out in a positive way the best of the lurking ideas and those little known organizational secrets that just might change the company. Without any formal processes genuine discussion rarely takes place.
2: Create focus and shared vision. As much as we don’t like to admit it, we still pretty much operate our companies by command and control; we think we have freedom but the boss is still so very much in charge. Sharing and creating is not something we are really asked to do.
Still, in this day and age, we are knowledge workers predominately, and assembly line workers not so much. As a knowledge worker, we have to make constant decisions in our little fiefdoms. So we are still operating as silos way too much.
My hat goes off to those organizations that can link its people together to create anything at all in a balanced, shared process. And, until we can do that, combining visions into a singular driving force is not going to happen. But, if, as, and when that does actually happen, look out for there is tremendous power on the horizon.
3: Communicate, communicate, communicate. Most companies are driven by productivity; their goal is efficiency, not effectiveness. Relationship building is frowned upon as self-indulgence. Laughing and joking around the water cooler for any length of time means you’re lazy and not focused. Yet until relationships are actually built the level of communication is going to be very low.
4: Ask, listen and empower employees. Who really delegates? We are by nature micromanagers who want it done “our way”. Delegation is really mentoring, requiring a lot more work than simply doing it ourselves. This is what we never seem to get.
Yet we are all overwhelmed, so we are busy handing off a lot of our stuff to the safest possible people who just might rise to our level of expectation. When it doesn’t happen as we imagined it would, we kick ourselves. If we can begin to see ourselves not as bosses but career coaches for those in our charge, our world will begin to change.
5: Recognize and praise employees. There are givers and getters. Both have their operating processes. Only the givers can share in another’s success. The getters never get past jealousy. If we want to be truly great, we can only do it by growing together and investing in each other’s success. Celebrating together is probably the biggest high of all.
“A leader motivates, inspires and energizes people by connecting the vision, mission, values, purpose and business goals of the organization to individual values and needs.”
A great platitude but for most of us it’s gobbledygook.
Leadership is from the heart and we decide what kind of heart we are going to have.
These five admonitions have extreme power but not if they’re implemented mechanically. But, if our goal is to get everyone having fun, we will be outright amazed at the results.
Leadership Practices That Drive Results. By: Durkin, Dianne. Baseline, Mar/Apr2010, Issue 103
Be the change you want to see in the world Love it and Live it