Enabling Roles

Management – wake up call!!!

The explosion in internet networking brought about by Facebook, Twitter, My Space, and a host of other channels means that people are more willing to share their ideas, opinions and fears than ever before. This new level of open communication is beginning to impact on organisations that are not making the best use of all their employees.

The fact that almost every employee survey reports a decline in productivity appears to be missed by most management teams. The reason for the poor productivity is due to employee demotivation caused by a range of factors including:

• Ineffective managers
• Bullying
• Poor relationships with colleagues
• Inadequate resources and instruction
• Lack of fulfilling work
• Fear
• Inappropriate culture

Although there are many effective managers who work well with their teams somehow they don’t appear willing to confront those other managers who fail to behave in ways that enable their teams to perform at truly effective levels. Part of the reason for their reluctance is often associated with a culture of blame and fear in that any perceived criticism of another more senior manager often results in a witch-hunt. The risk of being ostracised, sidelined or even asked to resign, is just too great for some managers due to negative financial consequences. Consequently few managers take the risk and tend to conform in ways that ignore the inappropriate behaviour of their colleague managers.

The new managing opportunities

I foresee a time in the near future in which employees at all levels will not be prepared to accept behaviour from another colleague that is inappropriate. They will use the internet networking processes to share their opinion of the situation to test how many others are experiencing a similar situation. This will raise increasing awareness of what is going on and will likely result in strategies being formed to deal with the inappropriate behaviour.

Instead of waiting for a ‘popular revolution’ to happen, now is a great opportunity for managers to adopt roles that are focused on empowering their teams to enable them to deliver effective results. The following roles are not new but are ones that are not used often or effectively enough. I will briefly describe them now and give more detail in later blogs:

1. Visionary
2. Enabler
3. Coach
4. Mentor
5. Team champion
6. Cheerleader

1 Visionary

Most teams want to have a manager who can communicate a vision of the future shape of the organisation in order to be clear on the direction it is taking and the parts they will play. Managers don’t need to read ‘crystal balls’ to create scenarios as most team members would be happy with a big picture description and the opportunity to ask questions that put more detailed shape to the way forward.

The importance of the Visionary role is in engaging in dialogues with a wide range of colleagues to obtain a clear understanding of what is going on in the organisation and externally, and how this impacts on the way forward. Armed with these insights they can then engage the team members in exploring how they will work together and individually to achieve the agreed goals. Managers would also keep their teams updated on progress and potential changes to plan in order to keep them up-to-date and focused on achieving the desired outputs.

2 Enabler

The Enabler role is very much about finding the most effective ways to assist colleagues and team members work productively on the things they need to do to achieve the desired outputs. This could involve interacting with other sections to clarify and resolve issues that could potentially deflect the team. The aim is to be fully informed of what is going on in the organisation in order to smooth the way by enabling team members to keep focused on what needs to be achieved. This includes removing blockages, resolving disagreements, engaging additional resources, acquiring new equipment and processes, and any other activity that facilitates/improves the team’s performance.

3 Coach

There will always be a need to develop capabilities in terms of knowledge, skill, and behaviour simply due to change being consistent. Managers who invest time keeping informed about the performance capabilities of all team members will be in an ideal position to help when needed. Regular informal performance reviews done on a daily or at least weekly basis are essential. The aim is to maintain constructive engagement with team members in order to be aware of their areas of over and under achievement. In some instances they will need to provide coaching to assist team members to improve their performance and in other cases to seek more challenging opportunities.

4 Mentor

This can be a very important role in providing effective guidance and support for team members. It is often suggested that managers should not mentor their own team members. Although this may be the case in some instances of difficulty between the manager and team member, in most cases the manager is in an ideal position to mentor team members. This is because the manager is usually informed about what is going on in the organisation and about new opportunities that could be available to the team. Being able to share these insights and to provide ideas on how team members could position themselves for new challenges is an important part of the effective manager’s role.

5 Team Champion

Almost every team will need to believe that their manager is a strong supporter of the team and uses every opportunity to be its champion. They would want their manager to be their advocate in meetings with other managers and with senior management. If difficulties were being encountered the team would expect their manager to share the issue with them and to seek their input on how to deal with it. Once an acceptable solution had been agreed the team would be confident that their manager would be supporting the decision whenever needed. If the issue was not being resolved appropriately they would expect to hear that from their manager and to have other opportunities to suggest a different way forward. When difficulties do arise it has been discovered that team members frequently know what needs to be done to fix the issue. This is why managers need to be available and willing to continually engage with their team. Once they learn to have confidence in their team they are then in a better position to champion them.

6 Cheerleader

Constructive and genuine encouragement given regularly to a team is the life blood of higher morale and productivity. Managers need to learn ways to find their teams doing things right rather than focusing on what they do wrong. Getting away from a ‘blame’ culture is the first step to discovering really effective ideas on how to effectively lead a team. Having confidence in the team and believing in their capability to be highly productive is an essential ingredient for a modern manager. Team members want their manager to be open and honest with them and if there is a performance problem to have this addressed in an appropriate manner. Most team members actually want to do a great job and it is the manager’s accountability to find ways to keep them on the right track. Finding them doing things right and letting them know this will provide significant benefits for both manager and team.

Managing – using the six roles

I intend to expand on the six roles in my next blog as the time is right for existing and new managers to think seriously about why the efforts of the truly effective teams are adversely impacted by the underperforming teams, and they appear to get away with it. This is where social networking is beginning to expose the incompetent managers and will eventually give encouragement to the effective managers to confront the underperformance in constructive ways. Their teams will come to expect no less from them.

Tom

Tagged as: champion, coaching, enabling, Engagement, mentoring, social networking, visionary, visioning