Leadership Challenges
July 3, 2008 – 11:43 pmThe challenge of being a bottom-up leader
Becoming a people focused bottom-up enabling leader can create difficulties in relationships when other leaders are comfortable with the way they operate in their current environment. To illustrate some of the challenges I share the following three examples from my experience without disclosing who the people involved are.
Scenario 1 – picture a manager’s office in which everything has a place and everything is in its allocated place. Her structured and disciplined work practices were applied to all the staff in the department. They also knew that it would be career limiting if any one of them attempted to change any of the process or practices without her explicit agreement. Enter a new office cleaner at the weekend who has been instructed by the contractor to make certain every surface is carefully dusted. He goes about his work diligently and needs to move a lot of files, furniture, and other personal odds and ends in most of the offices including the manager’s office. Monday morning the manager enters her office, freezes, goes red, and rushes out into the department and demands to know who had the temerity to make the changes. Of course no one had the faintest idea and to cut a long story short she was unable to effectively function for nearly a week until she put everything back in its ‘rightful’ place.
Scenario 2 – a well respected operations senior manager is appointed to manage a new division that had been set up to produce a high tech product for a new market. He was in his late 40s, somewhat reserved and formal in his management approach. This was typified by the formality of his dress along with the fact that he preferred to use surnames rather than first names. The majority of the team in the new division were young engineers, marketers, and salespeople who generally interacted with each other in an informal manner. Within six weeks a significant number of the team advised the group CEO that they could not work with the manager. They found him to be formally stiff, uncommunicative, judgmental, and to micro-manager in a way that delayed important decisions. Although the manager was given nearly two months intensive coaching very little behaviour change emerge and the CEO decided to offer the manager early retirement on the basis that he appeared unable to change his lifetime managing behaviour.
Scenario 3 – A new manager was appointed to manage a highly effective team in a customer facing service area that included handling customer complaints and returns. The new manager had recently graduated with an MBA and had worked in retail during her college and varsity vacation periods. The previous manager had introduced a number of very simple to manage systems that had enabled his team to become one of the highest performing in the business. Within the first week the new manager stated that she intended to introduce more rigorous systems to replace ones that she considered lacked a discipline approach. Although her team demonstrated that the existing systems actually worked and was easy to manage she pushed ahead and introduced, what her team called, “academic” systems that were very complex and took much longer to administer. Ten weeks later the manager was confronted by a demotivated team who told her that the new systems had dramatically reduced their performance. They told her that they wanted the old systems reintroduced and if this was not done immediately they all intended to seek opportunities in other departments. The manager refused and within another two weeks all but two of her team had transferred out.
Locked into own paradigm of leadership
In each scenario the leader/manager demonstrated an apparent insensitivity to the needs of their teams. Their behaviour communicated that they were clearly focused on meeting their own needs ahead of also meeting the needs of their teams. The mindset of these leaders/managers demonstrated an apparent reluctance to adapt to the changing circumstances and situations and they are not alone in this regard. In addition to the examples above I could add cases illustrating bullying, greed, vested interest, verbal and psychological abuse, intimidation, etc. Interestingly enough many of these behaviours are found in all types of organisation but are particularly prevalent in those single-mindedly focused on the bottom line.
Challenging the hierarchy
This is why I perceive it will be very difficult to change a traditional hierarchy into a people focused bottom-up leadership organisation. The main restraining force would be due to the high level of vested interest in organisational leadership determined to retain the status quo. Many of the leaders/managers have committed a significant amount of energy and effort to get to the positions they have and are certainly not prepared to accept changes that could be perceived to diminish their status, power, and benefits.
However, there are an increasing number of managers and leaders who know that change is actually inevitable due to the intense global competition and the uncertain global economics. Particularly if they want to remain competitive and retain their most effective people they will have no option other than have leaders able to create an engaging environment. For example the high cost of fuel has made shipping so expensive that a number of American manufacturers are closing their plants in Mexico, India, and China in order to increase manufacturing at home. Just imagine the difficulty they could encounter attempting to recruit genuinely engaged employees who not many years ago were laid off when organisations moved their manufacturing offshore.
Learning to change
As I meet with many different people as I work around the world it amazes me how few have actually thought about the future in terms of what they need to learn to keep up with development. I have encountered very capable people being made redundant or being fired because they had allowed themselves to believe that they were indispensable because of their knowledgeable, skill, sales record, or length of service. The fable of the Boiled Frog often comes to mind as a very useful description of what happens when a person sticks their head in the sand and becomes blinkered to the world changing around them.
Being bottom-up enabling leaders makes the difference as curiosity and adaptability are two of the characteristics that facilitate their ability to change. They are continually scanning both the global and local environments to keep in touch with what is changing and the value it adds or not. Taking risks is an accepted part of succeeding and they recognise that there will also make mistakes, however, the difference being what they learn from each mistake that enables them to avoid making the same mistakes again. This process gives them the confidence and thus a willingness to try new things as a means of adding to their capability skill set and marketability.
Taking action without approval
Part of their risk taking involves taking action to create a working environment based on bottom-up enabling leadership principles and practices without waiting on approval. This is based on their confidence in being able to construct, with their teams, an environment that fully engages everyone in ways that add measurable value to their organisations. They accept that some disapproval may be expressed by the more traditional managers, however, this does not distract them from continuing to actively involve all their colleagues in an enabling process.
Life long learning process
Bottom-up leaders are keenly aware that being effective is about continually developing their skills to enable them to keep adding value irrespective of the barriers that they encounter in organisations. There are a number of barriers and my next post will deal with some of them and suggest ways to negate their power to derail progress.
Tom
