BCA

By David Tighe

As managers become more senior, they start to run out of peers and superiors  on which to rely for effective coaching. Mentors still abound, but mentors do  not truly “coach” you, as Harvard Business School Professor Robert Kaplan notes  in a recent leadership article published by McKinsey and Co. Mentors usually  serve as sounding boards for advice, and rely on input from you, the manager,  about the situation that is challenging you.

That information naturally comes  through your mindset filters, which limits the mentor’s ability to spot and  correct your flaws or errors. Coaches truly observe you in action, and critique  you from their own perspective, offering more “tough love” than a mentor  can.

When third party coaching feedback gets scarce

So, as middle managers rise up into the senior hierarchy, true third-party  coaching feedback on their performance gets scarce. The issues:

• Fewer superiors above them actively observe how they go about their  business.
• Fewer peers around them are willing to act collegially and provide useful  criticism that could help make them better.
• This is both because there are: too many like-minded people among their peers, with similar habits and  mindsets, which drains the senior management pool of perspective.
• Too many competitors for a narrowing funnel of promotional opportunities.  Helping a colleague can hinder a manager’s own chances, naturally reducing the  incentive to help unless top management sets a strong collegial example (a rare  occurrence.)

 As you rise in the organization, people become less connected to you

Plus, by the time you become a senior executive, you have a set of  experiences from your own successful career that form your leadership mindset.  Earlier in your career, you probably set up coaching and mentoring relationships  using people senior to you which helped you climb those career rungs. As you  rise, those people become less connected to you. Perhaps they are now  subordinate to you. Perhaps they lost out to you for a new position, and moved  to another company.

As Kaplan notes, “many executives find that as they become  more senior, they receive less coaching and become more confused about their  performance and developmental needs. They may also become increasingly isolated  from constructive criticism-subordinates do not want to offend the boss and may  believe that constructive suggestions are unwelcome and unwise.”

Here is the paradox: To rise up the ranks, you naturally focus sideways and  upwards, adopting and adapting the vision coming from the top, running friendly  competitions with peers, and managing staff to meet your career goals. Now that  you have made it up the ladder, you need to change that heretofore successful  mindset of looking up for counsel and direction. With fewer “up” options, you  need to start focusing down for advice and ideas.

This concept sounds a bit nuts  to newly senior managers, but it is the key to their long-term success.

Don’t overlook developing mutually trusting subordinate relationships

Kaplan states: “At this stage of their careers, they may not have focused  sufficiently on developing mutually trusting subordinate relationships that  would make getting feedback and advice a lot easier.”

Too frequently, when these executives ultimately do receive feedback in their  year-end reviews (as part of a 360-degree-feedback program, say) they are  surprised to receive a lot of criticism about leadership, communication and  interpersonal skills. “These leaders may even learn, often too late, that the  various criticisms and concerns have been widely discussed among their  subordinates for an extended period of time without them being aware,” notes  Kaplan, a comment I strongly agree with based on my own coaching  experiences.

Frankly, when working with senior executives I spend a lot of time getting  this upward-looking mindset uninstalled and replacing it with a more productive  approach that embeds the spirit of the 360 Review into their daily leadership  routines.

360 Reviews are very successful

Here is what I mean by the 360-Review Spirit:

When you run a 360-degree review, everyone above, at your level and below you  get to offer frank assessments of how you have been performing. These reviews  are predicated on the idea that the formally structured environment encourages  people to be frank, while remaining constructive in their input. The underlying  assumption is that people (subordinates especially) will not share feedback that  is ‘negative’ without clear institutional protection against retribution and  need this special artificial construct to let their guard down.

So, once a year a lot of managers find out that while they may be managing  tasks and projects well, they are failing as leaders. This creates all kinds of  angst and hurt feelings. People react negatively to the whole process, and hurry  back to the culture they feel more comfortable in, whether or not it is  productive.

If 360-degree reviews are so effective, it strikes me as a great idea for  senior management to move heaven and earth to embed such an open, sharing  environment directly into the corporate culture. It’s hard work to establish  full employee engagement into the mindsets of employees and their managers, but  the 360-Review Spirit would have huge organizational advantages in  fostering a proper leadership culture.

Goals to shoot for include:

• Signal strongly that true feedback is valued and desired, as long as it is  forward-thinking and action-oriented. No snipping. sniping and  blame-laying.
• Eliminate the mindset that seeking help from subordinates signals weakness  as a leader. Replace it with one that admits a leader doesn’t know everything,  and relies on trusted lieutenants to inform him or her of the true nature of  events, and the full range of options for moving forward.
• Assume that everyone wants the best for the organization, and will  contribute at a high level if the organization finds a way to publicly value  that contribution consistently.
• Break the mindset that senior managers know more than subordinates. They  don’t. Perhaps they did at one time, but that time is gone.

A great leader knows that his or her subordinates know far more about the  current state of customer mindsets and potential than senior managers (and  perhaps even all of them put together!) They should not wait for formal review  processes to gather input on job performance and goal-setting.

The ongoing goal for every senior manager must be to create subordinate  relationships based on the three core tenets that we focus on in embedding a  full-engagement mindset:

Unshakable Trust:

• Encourage full and open truth in meetings.
• Expect the best of everyone. Everyone you hire is talented. Challenge them  to make full use of their skill sets.
• “Tuesday is Tuesday” (Stick to your commitments.)
• Take true accountability for your own results, good and bad.

The Pursuit of Truth:

• Take genuine interest in the truth at all levels.
• Center conversations on how to be “the best we can be,” not just meeting our  targets and beating our competition.
• Look way beyond the metrics and never settle for “good enough.” Pre-set  goals are pretty arbitrary, and may blind you to potential lying beyond those  limits.
• Encourage authentic, transparent and complete two-way communication from  bottom to top, by celebrating the truth whether good news or bad.

Communication that Counts:

• Keep communication “next action” focused. No dwelling or looking  backwards!
• End all communications with mutual commitment to action.
• Check up on commitments, see that delegations are fulfilled, and run  meetings with a forward focus on decisions that help to complete the  commitments. No updates that could be sent by e-mail!
• Instill a belief in everyone that every communication improves the  relationship.

Focusing on embedding these three habits as a day-to-day mindset will  generate better feedback, particularly from subordinates, that will help you to  materially improve your personal performance, often in 90 days or less. This, in  turn, should support your future career ambitions, because you will be basing  future decisions more on the truth than on the hunches that may come from your  own past experiences. And your team will be 100% behind you, pushing you up the  ladder.

Here is a link to Robert Kaplan’s article. Registration is  required, but it’s free.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=David_Tighe

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/6555881

By Bernard Donkerbrook in Leading Effectively, Center for Creative Leadership

Leaders and bosses are used to being listened to. They expect it. Some find it quite satisfying to be the person others listen to and look up to. They enjoy the attention and influence in this role. But being in the spotlight also means taking responsibility for your impact on others.

As boss or executive, you need to remember that you are being observed all the time. Big decisions and actions are front and center, but even small things can have unintended consequences.

Everything you do is observed

Everything you do (or do not do) is observed, analyzed and discussed by your people. What you talk about, include on an agenda and get personally involved with – as well as what you choose to avoid or delegate — sends powerful messages. Your employees then draw conclusions and implications about “what it meant” — whether you meant it that way or not!

Many managers are unaware that their behavior genuinely matters, or are oblivious as to how their behavior may be interpreted by others. For example, maybe you don’t make eye contact with an employee as you walk to the cafeteria; unbeknownst to you, this can be perceived as a sign of disapproval or unimportance, thereby increasing employee anxiety or mistrust. And you thought you were so self-aware!

To better understand the impact you are having on those around you, take a careful look at three things:

What You Say: Of course pay attention to the words, but your impact goes further. What you emphasize, what you repeat and the tone you use all have impact. Are you supportive or critical? Are you sending positive and encouraging messages or demanding, pressuring messages? Is your body language consistent with the words spoken? Remember, your people “listen” beyond the words to what you appear to convey.

What You Do: Your actions send a message of what and who are really important to you regardless of what you espouse. What relationships do you choose to develop and which people do you avoid? Which ones will you listen to and which do you overlook, dismiss or interrupt? Are you warm and open to some people and not to others? How do you listen? Do you have good eye contact when others are talking? Or are you focused on what you will say next? Are you distracted, keeping one eye on your smart phone?

What You Pay Attention To: You send signals by what you recognize, what you reward and whom you reward. The meetings you attend versus those you don’t tell people how you feel about the topic, the person and/or the priority. What you put on the agenda, follow up on or focus on will be given more weight than other projects or issues. Ask yourself: What do I personally get involved with? And what do I rarely pay attention to?

Consider Susan, the CEO of a small marketing company, who believed in the importance of diversity within the company, particularly to reach the range of clients she was targeting for growth. She conducted an appropriate off-site meeting, presented her strong views and expectations at the quarterly management gathering and assigned an implementation team. After that meeting, however, it was business as usual. Susan proceeded to focus on the next client crisis, ignoring the necessary continuing attention that building diversity requires.

Avoid creating a gap between words and actions

Bad manager? Poor leader? Not really. Susan forgot, with the best of intentions, that what she does and what she does not do have a huge impact. She inadvertently sent the message that “other” things were more important than diversity. By creating a gap between her words and actions, Susan undermined her efforts at supporting diversity — and undermined herself as a leader.

Are you getting the idea? Your ordinary actions and behaviors have an impact on the people around you. If you want to be influential as a leader, you have to accept the scrutiny, be highly self-aware and think carefully about the messages you want to send. Psychologist and author Nathaniel Branden says it well when he paraphrases a favorite Spanish proverb: “Take what you want in life — and pay for it.”

Bernard Donkerbrook is a coach and management development consultant based in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

By Linda Finkle

From Leading Effectively, Center for Creative Leadership

Even the best and brightest can fail and falter. In spite of intelligence and drive, expertise and experience, many top executives arrive in their high-impact roles without being fully prepared to meet contemporary challenges, according to the editors of a new book on executive development.

Businesses and institutions around the globe seek to innovate, adapt to change and forge a path to success. Yet almost two-thirds of change initiatives fail and turnover and turmoil at the top levels of leadership are commonplace. What is going on in the process of developing senior leaders that prevents them from effectively facing the demands of today’s leadership?

In the book Extraordinary Leadership: Addressing the Gaps in Senior Executive Development, editors Kerry A. Bunker, Douglas T. Hall and Kathy E. Kram have worked with a wide range of authors to address the “powerful learning gaps in executive development that can derail otherwise talented and successful managers.”

Today’s senior executives — as well as those in the leadership pipeline — must master complex and ambiguous business demands, but they must also face the human and relational challenges associated with leading in such an environment.

“More than ever before, successful leadership hinges on learning agility and the experience necessary to navigate and lead others though complex situations,” the editors write. “It’s not about the perfect pedigree or knowing all the answers anymore. It’s about resiliency and openness. Sheer intellect, savvy business sense, bottom-line focus, and solid management skills are necessary, but they are clearly not sufficient for meeting the demands of leadership in the 21st century.”

There are development gaps
Many top executives, though successful, have missed out on the more “elusive factors of leadership effectiveness” that have been overlooked by traditional development programs, systems and mindsets. As a result, their developmental gaps are likely to involve:

•Interpersonal relationship challenges.
•Difficulty adapting to rapid change and spiraling complexity.
•Problems partnering and sharing responsibility and accountability.
•A leadership style that not only fails to inspire and motivate the masses but may actually foster a culture of fear or risk aversion.
What can be done to re-invest in top leaders and build much-needed leadership capacity in our organizations? The 20 scholars and practitioners who contributed to Extraordinary Leadership (including Peter Vaill, Naomi Marrow, Jay Conger and Frances Hesselbein) evaluate the gap and offer solutions in four key areas:

1.The gap within: Intrapersonal learning and development issues within an individual.
2.The gap between: Interpersonal and relational issues that operate between individuals.
3.The gap in the system: Organizational issues that operate among systems, organizations, groups and individuals.
4.The gap at the institutional level: External and contextual issues such as cultural differences, dramatic change, paradigm shifts and economic fluctuations.
A tailored approach to assessment, feedback and development — with opportunities for reflection and experiential learning — is required to help individual leaders identify and overcome their personal gaps. Guidance and support are generally required and may take the form of a professional coach, a savvy HR advocate, a mentor in senior management or some combination of those roles.

“We realize that the world we now live in is more complex than ever before, and it is ever changing. As a consequence, our approaches to leadership development must offer certain opportunities for leaders to learn, reflect, experiment and dare to be vulnerable,” write Bunker, Hall and Kram.

“Only with such opportunities will individuals, groups and organizations generate the capacities to effectively respond and adapt to changing conditions as they unfold.”

This article is adapted from the Introduction to the book Extraordinary Leadership: Addressing the Gaps in Senior Executive Development, edited by Kerry A. Bunker, Douglas T. Hall and Kathy E. Kram and published by the Center for Creative Leadership and Jossey-Bass.

From Leading Effectively, Center for Creative Leadership

Last April, noted futurist and author Bob Johansen was giving a keynote presentation on leading in a volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA) world when a volcano erupted in Iceland.

As if nature were listening and decided to help Johansen make his point, the volcano Eyjafjallajökull spewed ash across Europe, halting flights and grounding about 10 million travelers worldwide. Commerce stalled, and routine business operations suddenly seemed vulnerable and volatile.

Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity are the realities of today and will continue to be so in the future, Johansen says. “It won’t be getting easier and leaders must accept this reality.”

But even the expert Johansen found the disruption hard to take. “The weather in London was clear — it looked fine. But I was stuck in London for a week; all my plans changed,” he recalls. “It is much more difficult to experience VUCA than talk about it! I thought: I can’t believe what a wimp I am about this! The point is that we have to experience these things — over and over — to learn and grow as leaders in a changing and uncertain world.”

Leaders will face challenges that have no solutions
In his new book, Leaders Make the Future: Ten New Leadership Skills for an Uncertain World, Johansen says that leaders increasingly will face challenges that have no solutions. Of course, they will have to make decisions anyway.

The VUCA world will also have both danger and opportunity, he explains. “Leaders will be buffeted, but they need not allow themselves to be overwhelmed, depressed or immobilized. Leaders must do more than just respond to the whirl of events, though respond they must. They must be positive change agents in the midst of chaos, creating the future. Some things can get better, even as other things get worse.”

To make a better future, leaders must seek out experiences and opportunities to learn and apply 10 new skills:

1.Maker instinct. Ability to exploit your inner drive to build and grow things, as well as connect with others in the making.
2.Clarity. Ability to see through messes and contradictions to a future that others cannot yet see.
3.Dilemma flipping. Ability to turn dilemmas — which, unlike problems, cannot be solved — into advantages and opportunities.
4.Immersive learning ability. Ability to immerse yourself in unfamiliar environments and to learn from them in a first-person way.
5.Bio-empathy. Ability to see things from nature’s point of view — to understand, respect and learn from nature’s patterns.
6.Constructive depolarizing. Ability to calm tense situations where differences dominate and communication has broken down — and bring people from divergent cultures toward constructive engagement.
7.Quiet transparency. Ability to be open and authentic about what matters to you — without advertising yourself.
8.Rapid prototyping. Ability to create quick early versions of innovations, with the expectation that later success will require early failures.
9.Smart mob organizing. Ability to create, engage with and nurture purposeful business or social change networks through intelligent use of electronic or other media.
10.Commons creating. Ability to seed, nurture and grow shared assets that can benefit other players &msdash; and sometimes allow competition at a higher level.

“The VUCA world of the future will be formidable and loaded with opportunities,” says Johansen. “The biggest danger is not being prepared — and you can control that by preparing yourself as a leader and readying your organization for an uncertain future.”

In tough and uncertain times, many of us look for leaders to point the way. We hope someone in the organization can offer clarity and direction.

In response, many leaders feel the need to create and communicate next steps, a new plan, the key priorities. But this impulse for clear direction can actually undermine your progress. “Do not assume just because you have provided clear direction that anything is going to happen,” says CCL’s Bill Pasmore. “It’s the people, not the plan.”

If you’re like most executives, you’ve got plans — strategies, tactics, priorities — and you’re ready for action. But what about your people? Are your people aligned to your vision? Is your culture prepared to accept change, embrace your goals and execute collaboratively? Without effective leadership to drive direction, alignment and commitment, plans grind to a halt.

Too many priorities can be a problem

Pasmore likes to tell the story of the CEO of a large defense contractor who was a good strategist and a clear communicator of plans and priorities. As a result, the senior team knew what needed to be accomplished, and they developed objectives for their departments.

“The CEO had been reiterating priorities for months, so imagine his surprise to hear that at the level below his direct reports, there was confusion about the company’s priorities. They insisted that too many things were important. In fact, everything was important,” says Pasmore. “When they looked to their bosses to arbitrate, everything seemed important to the members of the senior team as well. They, in turn, kept asking the CEO to tell them what to do first, second and third. How did this happen?”

As plans and ideas get put into action, they take on a life of their own. “The teams started working on their objectives, but often they needed help from the other departments to get their work done,” explains Pasmore. “But those objectives weren’t on the priority list for the other departments. People did their best to help their colleagues, but they didn’t have the time and resources to do all that everyone was asking them to do. And, since the senior team members knew all of the CEO’s priorities, they found it impossible to say no.”

The problem was that the CEO believed that giving clear direction would empower people to do their jobs and foster ownership of the outcomes. In fact, giving clear direction often creates less ownership, according to Pasmore. If the top provides absolute clarity, others will continue to look to the top for clarity. If answers, direction and plans are handed down, the people who do the work won’t be able to adjust, accommodate and collaborate.

Trying to manage from the top can halt the project

“The top can’t direct all of the things that emerge and have to be dealt with for the change to happen. Much of this work is spontaneous, unplanned, interdependent and emergent,” he says. “Trying to manage it at the top slows it down or brings it to a halt altogether.”

To prevent overload and non-alignment during execution, try these suggestions from Pasmore:

• Insist on feedback loops from the bottom up, or you’ll never know what’s going on. Strategy execution isn’t a top-down process. Find ways to consistently understand the reality throughout the system. And don’t shoot the messenger; placing blame will kill upward feedback.
• If the project is really important, spend the time and money to get all the key players together in the same room (or on the same videoconference) to iron out priorities every two to three months for the first year, and as needed thereafter. Take note: “key players” include those below the senior team who know firsthand what is actually happening in the work.
• When planning the project, agree on observable measures of progress and timetables rather than just setting priorities. For example: “Sales, research and manufacturing will have signed off on the design for the new product by the end of Q4.” This helps everyone understand when work is on track (or not).
• Build a “cooperation cost” into your planning. Add between 25 and 100 percent (depending on project complexity) to project costs and timelines to allow for emergent cooperative work as people learn what needs to get done. Be realistic; if the added costs make the project untenable, do not proceed on the assumption that cooperation won’t be necessary.

Reprinted with permission from Leading Effectively newsletter, Center for Creative Leadership

From World Advertising Research Center

Brands managers must become “generalists” who are able to deal with the wide range of challenges that characterise the digital and global age, McKinsey has argued.

The consultancy said brand and category managers have long been the “star players” in consumer packaged goods companies, responsible for ”pulling the levers at the center of complicated businesses.”

Such was their success that the top ten corporations in the sector saw their average annual revenues climb from $13bn  in 1990 to $47bn in 2009.

However, the trading climate has become much more complex, partly because these firms increased the size of their product portfolios from a norm of 46 brands to 153 brands over the last two decades.

These organisations also currently have a presence in around 160 countries compared with just 112 in 1990, accessing new target audiences and demographics as a consequence.

Marketers control of communications has been undermined

More broadly, the “explosion” of digital and social media has undermined marketers’ control of communications at a time when retailers are demanding customised campaigns.

A global poll of senior executives by McKinsey revealed that 55% of corporations were seeking to improve their brand management at present, but many have failed to effectively realise this goal.

One reason for this is that attempts to cut costs and standardise procedures mean brand managers often have to “cede advertising authority to a global campaign” and surrender control of the supply chain.

Moreover, many companies have added layers of management, divided up their operations into units focused on specific categories and countries, and built departments focusing on digital media.

Brand managers now report to a number of different superiors

As such, 81% of CPG firms now employ “matrix” structures which involve brand managers reporting to a number of different superiors, a figure that falls to 59% in other sectors.

Many brand managers are thus required to spend 80% of their time in meetings in a bid to coordinate and direct the variety of activities in which they are engaged.

According to McKinsey, this total can be reduced to 54% when more efficient processes are put in place, such as the clear identification of overall objectives and who has ultimate power to make decisions.

Reckitt Benckiser, the household goods firm, has achieved this aim by prioritising the 17 “power brands” that deliver 60% of its sales.

It also charges staff with global marketing duties to plan worldwide initiatives covering three year periods, while their local counterparts are made responsible for implementing these schemes.

“[Reckitt's] structure is kept flat, streamlined, and nonbureaucratic, all of which foster speed in making decisions and responding to changing consumer and market conditions,” McKinsey added.

Generalist organizations deliver 2-3% higher organic growth

Elsewhere, it suggested that companies which favour “generalist marketing functions” typically enjoy between 2% and 3% higher organic growth rates than those promoting “specialist groups”.

Procter & Gamble was named as having equipped its employees with the necessary skills in this area, not least because 95% of its brand managers have worked their way up the ranks.

“To reinforce this apprenticeship model, P&G has developed a common marketing language, established an internal marketing ‘university’,” McKinsey said.

“It has also created centers of expertise through global networks of experts with shared competencies, and redefined brand management as a career, extending the time horizons of people in these roles.”

Five Leadership Skills You and Your Organization Cannot do Without…

Leaders today live in an age of remarkably complex challenges. They range from expanding into volatile international markets, to dealing with the fallout from natural disasters, to navigating their organizations through a broken global economy while preparing for future opportunities. Complex challenges, our research has shown, don’t yield to quick fixes. They don’t respond to standard approaches or conventional knowledge. In fact, 92 percent of executives surveyed by CCL said the challenges their organizations face are more complex than they were just five years ago. On average, they take two years to solve.

Our research also tells us this: you and your colleagues at every levelof your organization do not have all the skills needed to lead effectively in the future. CCL surveyed more than 2,000 leaders from15 companies in the U.S., India and Singapore. We asked these leaders to rate 20 leadership skills in terms of how important they are rightnow for success and how important they will be for success over the next five years.

The upshot: the four most important future skills – leading people, strategic planning, inspiring commitment and managing change – are weak points among today’s leaders. There exists, in other words, a glaring gap between the skills leaders have now and the ones they will need in just a few short years. At CCL, we call it the “leadership gap.”

In a world of increasingly complex challenges that demand leadership traits many of us do not yetfully have, there’s no time to waste in developing ourselves and the men and women in ourorganizations. Based on CCL’s research and practical experience over the past 40 years, we believethe leadership gap can be closed by focusing on these five areas:

Teamwork and collaboration

Managing change

Communication

Learning agility/growth mindset

Judgment

Printed with permission of Center for Creative Leadership. The complete white paper from which this Executive Summary is taken, is available in its entirity on the Center for Creative Leadership website… www.ccl.com.