Why is leadership failing?

Current Situation

I have been actively engaged in the field of leadership for many years and, like many others, know leadership is a very unique process that is frequently linked to the skills needed to meet the needs of specific situations. This is particularly demanding on leaders when the speed of change is accelerating and the skills needed to navigate a way through organisational and market complexity are also changing. It is therefore not a surprise to observe the difficulty many organisations are encountering in obtaining effective leadership from those who are expected to deliver it. The problem tends to be located in the belief that most managers can also be leaders which certainly does not appear to be substantiated by the poor performance of many organisations. The inadequacy of leadership is often masked by pointing the finger at the poor performance on employees. Although there will be some truth in this assertion the real reason stems from the fact that it is very difficult to be an effective leader in a traditional hierarchical organisation.

Problems created by an organisational hierarchy

Let’s look firstly at the issue of employee performance. Almost all of the thousands of people that I have encountered during many years working in a wide variety of organisations around the world genuinely want to do a good job. However, from personal experience a significant number of them were unable to achieve to the level of their capability due to poor leadership. It was this fact that has led me to ponder the question of why so many organisations fail to create an environment that enables all their people to contribute to the best of their ability. As expected there is not one single reason but a complex mix of factors that influence how people respond to their working environment. The following factors are some of the reasons that impact on individual and collective performance:

· Organisational top-down hierarchy

· Strongly entrenched Silo mentality

· Top-down corporate strategy

· Manager/subordinate relationships

· Unclear goals/targets/outcomes

· Individual based incentive plans

· Poor learning and development methods

· Inadequate communications

· Lack of ‘tools’ to be effective contributors

· Change resistance of the diehards

· Low morale through poor relationship

· Inadequate recognition for effective performance

· Inequality in rewards for those who truly add value

It is quite easy to identify that the reasons at the top of the list are actually the ones that create many of the other reasons.

Much has been said about the increasing rapid rate of change that many countries and organisations are experiencing and it is no surprise that these countries and organisations are facing real cultural and economic difficulties. The organisational hierarchy has played an important part in creating order and in achieving some outstanding results in the past. However, there is a major question mark over its ability to handle the speed and diversity of change being encountered currently and certainly in the future.

The top-down nature of the hierarchy naturally creates time lags in all activities as information must pass up and down through the various levels. There is also the factor of perception being applied to the information with the real risk of it being distorted by untested assumptions on what was initially intended. It therefore should come as no surprise to learn that the people who know what really is going on tend to be at what is termed the “sharp end” of the organisation. Yet their valuable tacit and explicit knowledge is frequently ignored or distorted by those who ‘manage’ them. To effectively tap into this wealth of knowledge and experience is the reason I believe that a process of ‘bottom-up’ leadership will do the job.

A ‘Bottom-up’ Leader

An effective leader is considered to be someone who has the ability to share a compelling vision of a desirable outcome, create the environment in which a group of individuals work as a collaborative team focused on turning the vision into a reality. The leader provides direction and focus for the team usually achieved using a dialogue process that captures the thoughts and ideas of the team.

The leader makes the time to ensure that the team is clear about who is accountable for each part of the process and that the overall outcome is understood by all. Regular and appropriate feedback loops are integrated into the process to enable effective monitoring of progress as well as identifying factors that could suggest changes are needed to the way the team or an individual is working or to the actual planned outcome. The leader operates in an information rich environment created by the constant quality feedback and feedforward processes managed by the team that enables a sharp focus to remain on the desired outcome.

Leader as part of the team

The leader is part of the team and accepts that on occasions other members of the team may in fact take on the leadership role because they have the necessary capabilities to deal with particular situations more so than the nominated leader. The working environment is based on trust and respect for each other and the language is about our “leader, colleagues, team, accountability, achievement, success, and celebration” rather than “boss, staff, levels, roles, responsibility, remuneration, and appraisal”. There is a constant sharing of information between the team members and sincere dialogue about issues that may be contentious because colleagues have different perspectives and expectations. By transparently dialoguing these and all other issues the best solution is more likely to emerge because the team is able to make the tough call when necessary. They tend to avoid meetings and discussions based on consensus as they know from experience that this process tend to produce a solution driven by the lowest common denominator and frequently not what is needed by the organisation.

This briefly describes what I consider to be the bottom-up leadership practice that has the built in flexibility and capability to deal with the current complexity found in most organisations. The leadership process would naturally start with the people at the ‘bottom’ of the organisation where the real work is often done. I plan to share over the coming weeks my thoughts on how ‘bottom-up’ leadership can effectively overcome the many reasons listed above that take away the initiative, energy, commitment, and power of a significant number of people in both public and private organisations.

 

Tagged as: demotivators, Hierarchy, Leadership, new ways, teamwork