Transforming Leadership

Equipping Yourself and Coaching Others to Build the Leadership Organization, Second Edition

Terry Anderson

• Verlag: Routledge
• Jahr: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351407236
• Auflage: 1
• Thema: Business
• Thema: Management

True leadership is the most valuable commodity in the world- yet few really know how to attain it. This new edition of a much talked about executive and management self-development book offers a fresh approach to assessing and cultivating vital leadership skills in any organization. It is newly updated with creative self-assessment tools and an emphasis on leadership coaching and mentoring. It goes beyond the traditional to define the relationship between leadership performance and corporate performance optimization.
Transforming Leadership introduces a new style of leadership-one that blends effective business practices with compassion and awareness-to help today's leaders develop and build what Anderson calls a ""leadership organization"" that will flourish in our ever-changing global marketplace. It shows you how to become a dynamic leader as well as prepares you to develop your colleagues' and employees leadership skills while you work with them. This is the kind of innovative, inside-out leadership that is sure to help any company meet the challenges that lie ahead.

Chapter 1

INTRODUCTION: Transforming Leadership that Builds the Leadership Organization

My premise is that leadership is not exceptional (some are born with it), but the natural expression of the fully functional personality. As Warren Bennis put it, “The process of becoming a leader is much the same as becoming an integrated human being.”

by John Thompson,

Corporate Leadership in the 21st Century

Transforming Leadership and The Promise of the Leadership Organization

“Institutionalizing a leadership-centered culture is the highest act of leadership.”

John Kotter

“Without Vision, the People Perish”

The proverb in this heading reminds us that the vision we have in mind determines the way we respond to challenging conditions. If we have a pessimistic vision, we might tend to stalk the territory like wolves of destruction, seeking only immediate opportunities for gratifying selfish ends. If we have no vision at all, we might wander aimlessly behind others, like sheep lost in a fog of indecision. Or if we have a clear vision of realistic possibilities, we can soar as birds of creative change, rising above the clouds of mediocrity to see new vistas and inspire others to achieve cooperative fulfillment.

Transforming leaders build the leadership organization. They are those who have inwardly decided to grow into being more conscious, developed, skilled, sensitive, and creative participants.

Transforming leaders build the leadership organization. They are those who have inwardly decided to grow into being more conscious, developed, skilled, sensitive, and creative participants. They strive to make positive differences in organizations and in the lives of others wherever they go. They climb the heavens, reaching beyond the ordinary, the predictable, the average—charting new territories and possibilities. They reach up for leadership from those who are wiser, and pull others “below” them upward to greater, unseen heights on the way. This is not easy to accomplish, especially in a rapidly changing world where it seems that many cynical people belittle such lofty ideals. With vision and leadership, however, people can live increasingly meaningful and fulfilling lives. This is an important foundation to enable teams and organizations to make a serious and positive impact on the communities around them. This is illustrated in this diagram.

These are many of the big themes on the horizon that executives and managers must get ready to help the other leaders in their organizations address: Self-Management; Self-Managed High Performance Teams; Beyond Hierarchy; Diversity; Global; Quality; Conformance to Requirements; No-Doubt Contracting; Rapid Response; International Standards; Focused Marketing; The Learning Organization; Continuous Improvement; Customerization; Innovation; Fashion; Entertainment; Multimedia. Family; Credibility; Trust; Competence; Caring; Ethics; Spirit; Transformation. All these themes are important and represent an overwhelming blizzard of change demands on the average decision-maker—demands you can help your people with if you have the skills and the know-how.

Acts of Kindness Are Required

Now, more than at any other time, leaders in your organization need competent and trusted consultants (either internal or external) as associates who can come alongside them and provide the following:

1. A way to gain a visionary view of an encouraging future.

2. A skilled mind at planning, managing and leading fast in unpredictable change environments.

3. An encouraging spirit.

4. Coaching for their own executive and team development.

5. A caring heart, so that they can, in the long term, become their own “consultants” with the skill to act with the same level of competence you have gained over time. In turn then, they will be more able to pass this torch of knowledge and wisdom along to others.

To become this trusted associate, whether you are helping leaders manage a corporate turnaround, a quality programs intervention, or an ISO 9000 series certification process, you must possess the same prerequisite sets of knowledge, qualities, and skills. Although most successful leaders may have the necessary qualities, they are not likely to have developed the full battery of technical and people skills required to lead and empower other leaders to transform their organizations into winners in the globally competitive new millennium.

Critical Leadership Qualities that Managers Want from Consultants and that Employees Want from Managers

All leadership is some form of change management. Fulfilling relationships have the following five qualities that people in your organization and your family seek.

1. Understanding personal and organizational needs, problems, goals, and dreams helps people feel comfortable and optimistic about the relationship.

2. Caring that gets results does inspire people to want to engage you as a trusted leader to help manage necessary change.

3. Respecting people as valuable, unique, imperfect, and developing souls gains their respect.

4. Genuineness is the bottom-line requirement—if we are perceived to be personally phony, or incapable of delivering our claims, we are dead in the water.

5. Specificity in our written and spoken communication—that leaves no doubt in anyone’s mind about the intended meaning of words or contract issues—is critical to earning trust and gaining interpersonal and corporate credibility.

All decisions to change, to buy, to repurchase—or even to love—hinge ultimately on the clear content of conversations and the quality of commitments in relationships!

Although most successful leaders may have the necessary qualities, they are not likely to have developed the full battery of technical and people skills required to lead and empower other leaders to transform their organizations into winners in the globally competitive new millennium.

But if we are truly sincere, genuine in our intent to build a leadership organization and the people in it, and if we have the required qualities inside to gain credibility, that doesn’t mean we will have developed the technical knowledge or specific skills to bring our sincerity and compassion forward to meet the people’s real needs.

Most Managers Lack Some of the Critical Skill Sets

These are the five skills sets of Transforming Leadership:

1. Self-Management

2. Interpersonal Communication

3. Problem-Management

4. Consultative Skills

5. Role, Skills, and Style-Shifting Skills

They are all required for successful intervention as a person or as a professional leader. These skills are more important than the “business,” marketing, promotions, sales, analytical, or technical skills you may have because they are central to your gaining credibility with others. They are also required by the mid-managers, supervisors, or people you serve in order for them to manage change, build teams, develop positive culture, and protect themselves and one another from burnout, at the same time.

Our observations suggest that less than one in twenty managers or consultants has all five skill sets required to lead individuals, groups, and organizations effectively. Lacking in any one of the BIG FIVE skill sets causes a breakdown in effectiveness when acting as a person, family leader, consultant, or manager. Also, fewer than one in fifty managers or consultants has developed the Transforming Leadership skills to the point where they can teach others these critically important skills. These skills form the foundation of building a Leadership Organization.

What is the Leadership Organization?

Definition: The Leadership Organization creates and sustains a leadership-centered culture where leaders are equipped to develop leaders at all levels of the organization—from top down and from the inside out.

To the extent that this is effective, it will result in the development of all people in the organization, who in turn will have developmental impact on their families and communities. This developmental impact occurs because learning occurs. Learning occurs because leaders are competent, caring, creative, and honest.

The Leadership Organization is based on a commitment by visionary leaders to develop people (and organizations) by providing opportunities for on-the-job learning that leads to spiritual, intellectual, interpersonal, physical, career, financial and emotional health, growth, and well-being. The obvious rationale for facilitating this development is that realizing the potentials of people is a worthy endeavor and—from a business point of view—results in higher personal, team, and also organizational performance. The Leadership Organization has at its helm leaders who are developmental change agents—transformation specialists who act as exemplars in the move to lead more fulfilled, service-oriented lives that make a positive difference in the lives of people who will, in turn, affect their organization’s success the most. This is the way for organizations to regain the loyalty of so many who have grown distrustful and disloyal due to layoffs, restructuring, re-engineering, and other change initiatives.

These skills are more important than the “business,” marketing, promotions, Sales, analytical, or technical skill you may have because they are central to your gaining credibility with others.

Therefore, in a Leadership Organization, those in senior positions are the first to make the commitment to long-term development. With consultative assistance, they assess, plan, develop, and evaluate their own personal and executive team capabilities. They learn how to become better leaders and how to develop other leaders directly through their own mentoring of protégés and/or through the development of organization-wide programs that integrate learning leadership with the management functions of the work itself. After the development of the executive team, there are identifiable steps that a Leadership Organization goes through to effect such a large scale and long-lasting organizational transformation.

1. Shift paradigms from mainly managing the business “status quo” to leading performance teams toward the realization of a preferred future.

2. Develop and communicate an inspiring vision of an ideal future that will motivate individuals and teams. Involve others in creating this vision: People get behind what they help create!

3. Assess the needs, wants, fears, and problems of the organization (including those of the internal and external “customers”).

4. Using a systems approach to change management, set realistic, achievable transition goals that, when accomplished, will realize the vision.

5. Strategically plan and implement step-by-step changes, and remove obstacles to realizing the new vision and goals.

6. Prepare, train, coach, and/or mentor the key leaders—those who are willing, ready, and able—to develop self-leadership capabilities in all members of the organization.

7. Research and/or track the outcomes of change initiatives and report progress at regular strategically timed intervals throughout the process so that movement toward the vision can be celebrated and unexpected obstacles can be removed or managed.

8. Engage intentionally in continuous developmental learning that results in ongoing personal, team, organization, family, and community development.

These steps are vital to the long-term health of any organization. Without developed leaders—without a strong team at the helm—the organization will have no vision, no spirit, or will be a house divided against itself and it will not as easily endure the storms of change we are now beginning to face.

How is The Leadership Organization Different from Traditional Organizations?

The Leadership Organization prepares the leaders first, but eventually everyone in the organization learns to work on the organization to improve it, as well as work in it. People can learn to see their individual contributions in the context of the organization as a whole if they are given feedback about their work unit, how the internal and external customers are influenced by their work, and how their decisions and actions are contributing to or detracting from the financial or service quality of the organization. It is clear that the Leadership Organization is not ordinary and, that even though it is not a quick and simple transition to make, it is necessary to move forward into a preferred future.

Without developed leaders—without a strong team at the helm—the organization will have no vision, no spirit, or will be a house divided against itself, and it will not as easily endure the storms of change that we are now beginning to face.

We compare traditional organizational characteristics with the key attributes of the Leadership Organization on the following page.

Build the Leadership Organization First: Then Build a Learning Organization.

The Leadership Organization provides a foundation of skills for the leader of the Learning Organization. The Leadership Organization development process and Transforming Leadership skills provide the process and content to lay the foundation of the learning organization. For example, the five disciplines outlined by Senge—systems thinking, personal mastery, mental models, building shared vision, and team learning—assume that leaders and learners either possess or can quickly develop the requisite competencies to apply these five disciplines.

Our observation during live assessment and training sessions indicates, however, that fewer than one in three trainees who claim to be good communicators can actually demonstrate effective communication skills in a live-video interview where we can assess their competency levels with a high degree of accuracy. Even fewer of those assessed have demonstrated the more complicated and difficult-to-learn counseling, coaching, and consultative skills. Therefore, it is difficult for managers who are unskilled in the foundations of people-leadership skills to lead the transformation toward becoming a learning organization.

Moreover, it is possible to put into place the basics of a learning organization by installing “systems” and still not develop the leaders to the point where they can develop the people who will execute these systems willingly and competently. In a recent conversation with a health care executive, the point was made clear to me that the TQM process that was initiated was being undermined by over 75 percent of the mid-managers in the organization who could not lead teams and could not gain the cooperation of workers to implement the TQM requirements—and morale sagged as never before.

Senge states that the five disciplines of the learning organization, “might just as well be called the leadership disciplines as the learning disciplines.” He goes on to state:

These disciplines span the range of conceptual, interpersonal, and creative capacities vital to leadership. But most of all, they underscore the deeply personal nature of leadership. It is impossible to reduce natural leadership to a set of skills or competencies. Ultimately, people follow people who believe in something and have the abilities to achieve results in the service of those...