Old Versus New - Which model are you?
The management model that has existed and thrived since the industrial age is rapidly evolving and shifting. In an era that lacked meaningful technology and real time information, managers had to plan, direct, control, and manage both people and processes to get work accomplished. Telling people what to do and how to do it was required and accepted for decades. Generations of leaders were trained and molded using this management model.
Fast forward to today and how work is organized and results are accomplished. No one wants or needs to be managed and the process of planning from the past takes too long and often the resulting plan is obsolete before it is even finalized. And very few, if any, people today want their time and efforts controlled and directed by someone else.
So have you and your organization made the shift from the old, ineffective management model to the new leadership model of inspiring, energizing, facilitating, and developing? In fact, rather than extensive time and efforts expended on management planning, do you inspire a purpose that leads to results through others? Think about it, Martin Luther King didn’t have a “I Have a Plan” speech, he delivered a “I Have a Dream” speech. In the future, it is not about having a detailed plan, it is all about having and connecting others to a purpose. Inspire results with a purpose.
Do you and other formal leaders create individual and team energy instead of assigning directive tasks? Have you developed a “lead where you are” culture where employee-led initiatives tackle the toughest issues and create the greatest opportunities? Don’t direct people, create energy by empowering, guiding, and recognizing?
People and their work product are not assets to be controlled as in the past. The successful leaders of the future facilitate and cultivate trusted, authentic relationships where active listening takes place versus orders given. Where change is not managed or controlled but environments and competencies are developed to proactively lead change and positive disruption is encouraged. Where creativity and innovation is more valued than management reports.
And finally, since no one wants to be managed, the critical leader shift from managing people to developing, coaching, and mentoring the leader in everyone is the foundation for success. People need clarity, alignment, and a clear sense of ownership leading to enhanced accountability. Stop managing people and make the shift to developing people.
The old versus new model, where are you?
Cornerstone Learning is a performance and leadership consulting organization that has worked with clients all over the world. Our focus is working with individuals and organizations to create performance solutions that deliver top-tier results by inspiring, enabling, and developing employee-led, leader supported, and organization enabled performance. We are able to successfully deliver this through multiple products and services such as employee surveys, online training, performance assessments, and performance coaching. The goal at Cornerstone Learning is to assist our clients in developing a dynamic and customized blue print to deliver role model organizational and personal performance.
Cultivating Employee Engagement
Are you asking the right questions?
Now is that time of year where many organizations invest time and resources to measuring their employee’s engagement. Clearly employee engagement is critical to sustained, top-tier results, but what engages people and how best to engage them is changing rapidly. What doesn’t change as rapidly are the survey questions developed to determine engagement and the post survey process for assessing progress throughout the year.
So are we asking the right questions to even gauge engagement? Then are we, as an organization, providing the focus, resources, and support required to enhance and cultivate top-tier engagement that leads to top-tier performance? Often times, components of what we measured in the past for engagement such competitive benefits packages, comparable pay and compensation, and other internal policy and procedures, etc are important to measure and understand but tend to be lagging indicators. They tend to have marginal impact on true engagement and we have never come across survey results in over 20 years that say our organization has too rich of a benefit package, pays too well, and provides way too much vacation and leave time!
Before investing in your employee engagement survey process this year take a few minutes to redefine what future, top-tier employee engagement looks like throughout the organization. Once success is defined, reimagine your employee engagement strategy going forward. Your strategy should include thought and discussion on what engages your employees and how it has changed in your industry and organization over time. Based on that, ask the questions that will provide insight and feedback on the current state with a focus to the future. Set your future engagement factor bar higher, don’t settle for just a reflection on how well you are doing today. That leads to settling for and cultivating more of the same.
Does your engagement survey questions provide insight and feedback in these critical engagement factor areas?
· Creating a unique employee experience for each individual
· Evolving to an employee-led, leader supported performance model
· Knowledge shared and feedback received in near real time
· A shared purpose throughout the organization that inspires performance
· A culture that enables the right behaviors that lead to the right results and stands on values and principles
· A climate that focuses more on change leadership than on change management
· Leadership that inspires, facilitates, and develops not directs, controls, and manages.
In addition to considering these future focused engagement survey factors, are the recommendations, actions, and results of the annual feedback process employee-led, supported by leadership, and enabled by the organization, not driven by management directive? And is progress on these employee-led actions and recommendations followed up on during the year with random rapid pulse surveys to gauge near term progress so success can be leveraged and adjustments can be made, if necessary, prior to another beginning of year engagement survey coming around again?
Employee engagement is changing. To make 2017 your year for enhanced employee engagement, start and end by asking the right questions!
Cornerstone Learning is a performance and leadership consulting organization that has worked with clients all over the world. Our focus is working with individuals and organizations to create performance solutions that deliver top-tier results by inspiring, enabling, and developing employee-led, leader supported, and organization enabled performance. We are able to successfully deliver this through multiple products and services such as employee surveys, online training, performance assessments, and performance coaching. The goal at Cornerstone Learning is to assist our clients in developing a dynamic and customized blue print to deliver role model organizational and personal performance.
Stop Managing! #Leadership #Management #Howwouldyoulikeit
Stop Managing!
Think about it, do you want to be managed? What if in your next team or staff meeting you asked your people, “How many of you want to be managed?”? How many do you think will raise their hands? I can already tell you not one of them will.
No one wants to be managed, including you. But our title is manager! Processes, projects, time lines etc. need to be managed. When we start managing our people, we build a culture and environment of compliance and complacency. They wait for you as their manager to tell them what to do and then the next thing you want them to do and so on...the cycle repeats. And if something doesn’t go well the response is often, “Well that is what I was told to do”.
The next few blogs will highlight opportunities to stop managing your people, but for now I want you to think about this: If I reported to me, would I say to others “I am being managed by my boss.”? Remember, no one wants to be managed, including you!
Ask Me I Will Engage, Tell Me I Will Comply #WisdomWednesday #Leadership #Management
As leaders, the choice is ours. We can tell our people what and how to do their jobs and for the most part they will do it. They listen, they act and then they wait. They wait for you to tell them what to do next. Certainly, there are times the 'tell' model can be useful, for example, when communicating simple tasks, training on something new or different, or critical tasks where failure can lead to disaster. However, when you continually tell, you create an environment of compliance. Most likely your people will smile and seemly be glad to do the work. But when they go home or talk to one another they say things like “I can’t believe they expect me to do that!” or “I am so tired of being micromanaged!”.
However, if you ask someone what and how they can accomplish success, they engage in thinking and assessing, they initiate action and follow-up. Define success of what you want or need and then ask, “What options do you see?”, “What is your recommended path to success?” and just see what you receive in return (in addition to more committed and engaged people)!
Your challenge this week – Ask - don’t tell, and see the difference!