Why Leadership/Why
Now By
STEVE COATS |
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Leadership provides the foundation on which excellence
is built, so continuing to develop leaders in all areas must be a first
priority in business today.
Welcome to the "Nanosecond Nineties!"
It is a different world out there. Loyal customers suddenly
have higher expectations, and have become more fickle and irrational in
their demands. Your competitors have decided that your customers should
no longer buy your products and are going after them in unprecedented
ways. Your people probably wonder when the constant state of change and
confusion will end, or whether they will survive the next reorganization,
or the one shortly thereafter.
The marketplace is tumultuous and unforgiving. It has
forced organizations to think and act in fresh, perhaps even radical ways.
It has also resulted in some unusual strain on loyalty and relationships
in all aspects of business.
Today's organizations face some tough challenges that
are in fact, relationship oriented. Some of those are:
- How do we get people to become more willing to take
some risks or try new things?
- How do we generate more passion and commitment toward
our purpose and vision?
- How do we demonstrate that our values and principles
are not just "hot air?"
- How do we increase the faith the people have in their
leaders' abilities to take them successfully into the future?
- How do we more fully enable people, and take advantage
of the talents they bring?
- How do we increase the loyalty and belief of all
our stockholders?
The Secret of Strong Relationships
For any relationship to succeed, whether it is friendship,
marriage, or team membership, there must be trust. Without trust, there
can be no leadership, no followership, no teamwork, no customer loyalty.
Building and sustaining trust is the single most perplexing issue that
organizational leaders face in these contemporary times of tremendous
change and constant upheaval.
People are very comfortable with and attached to "the
way things have always been done." With the marketplace demonstrating
that traditional ways are no longer good enough to survive, people have
become uncomfortable and reluctant. Unswerving trust (sometimes called
the leap of faith), is required for them to be able to let go of the old
and venture with confidence, into the uncharted waters of the future.
If ever there was a time when exemplary leadership was
needed throughout organizations, it is now. Leaders bring the issue of
trust to the forefront, fostering better, more productive relationships.
Strong relationships produce synergy, and thus provide far more innovations
and solutions to the difficult challenges like those listed above. They
directly and positive impact the bottom line.
One of the most important, highest leverage functions
of senior managers is to develop more leaders within their organizations.
In order to do this, they must continue to refine their own individual
and collective leadership abilities, and create an environment for others
to do the same.
Leadership Comes First
Companies are investing staggering sums of money in
quality initiatives, process and systems re-engineering, and customer
driven reorganization. Sadly, a large proportion of these strategic overhauls
have not lived up to their promises. The reason is they desperately lack
the visionary leadership required to strengthen people's belief in a new
future, and their confidence that the new strategies will take them there.
With no leadership, people get exclusively focused (and easily swallowed)
by the management directives of streamlining the "hows" of the
business. The meaning of "why" the work is important, gets lost.
With down sizing a closely associated outcome of efforts like these, people
quickly become cynical about the future and turn away. When this happens,
disappointing results are inevitable.
Many companies have decided that the best way to manage
the challenges posed by these "re-everything" efforts is to
throw teams at them. The value of teamwork in today's world is beyond
question. It is a fact that more and better work can be accomplished through
teams. The world is just too complex for even the best to fly solo any
longer, thus high-performing teams doing real work offer tremendous advantages.
This is especially true if the senior officers can find ways to work as
a team, because they too will be able to get more done, as well as visibly
model the value of teams for everyone else.
Interestingly enough, the nanosecond nineties is throwing
some fast curve balls at the traditional concept of teams. People are
portioned into teams without the opportunity to learn what it means to
be a good team member. So called empowered teams, working within a command
and control, hierarchical organization seldom work. Teams today must serve
specific purposes,
But, for any team to be successful, there must first
be effective leadership. Leaders provide vision, competence and heart,
enabling and inspiring members to want to achieve astonishing performance
results. In the very best teams, leadership "roves," meaning
that practically all members will emerge at one time or another to take
on the responsibilities of leading. Simply stated, without the shared
responsibility of leadership, teams will never be able to reach their
full potential.
Leadership and teamwork are indeed closely linked. In
fact, it is through teams, that leaders are able to get extraordinary
work accomplished. Yet the fact remains that neither high performance
teams nor visionary leadership, by themselves, is enough to ensure an
organization's continued prosperity. But coupled together, they become
an unbeatable combination.
How much better would it really be for you if your employees
became much more inspired and excited about their work? What would really
happen if they became relentlessly motivated toward providing astonishing
service to the customers, other internal divisions, and each other? What
would it be like if everyone worked like volunteers for a cause in which
they truly believed, opposed to showing up for work because they feel
entitled to a job and a paycheck. How far could you go, if each person
became genuinely more trusting of everyone else?
Idealistic, philosophical questions? Hardly. They in
fact, are the road map for prosperity in today's convoluted marketplace.
They also illustrate the personal and organizational power that results
from good leadership.
Steve Coats is a senior partner with International Leadership
Associates, a Cincinnati firm, dedicated to leadership development.
Copyright 1996 International Leadership Associates |