Culture and Change

Every week my group presents its weekly intraday reports to the leadership team. This includes supervisors, managers, and directors, so there is quite a variety of people that can establish culture and change it when necessary. The reason I present that combination is because leaders can fall into a culture rut. Each week the leaders get critical about the work presented to them, take an hour to decide a plan of action, and decide on putting several confusing action items together to solve departmental issues. This of course should be completed usually within a half hour. Usually what comes out of this is a rushed group trying to complete multiple items, with the problems not completely solved and the fingers of blame pointing in several directions.

This scenario, to me, is an example of culture and one that is in need of change. Culture can be defined as processes taken to complete daily tasks, how they are communicated, how consensus is reached, conflict management, and items learned to be able to complete tasks more efficiently. Instead the department has many opinionated, agenda driven speakers vying for their agenda to be heard. I think as a group we all need to decide that its time for a culture change.

Some ways to do this is limit the number of participants perhaps on a rotational basis so different leaders can be heard and can communicate with their respective teams. Another thought in changing the culture is to present a solution to any problem presented as a team. This removes blame and inserts constructive steps. Another thing is to have weekly forums involving the entire group. This can be a great place to communicate expectations and goals. Finally I think it is imperative to communicate lessons learned and talk about better ways to organize tasks, run meetings, and communicate with one another. It will be beneficial for production, group confidence, and cohesiveness.

I recently read an article that mentions the fact that the workforce needs to be able to adapt to changing conditions. They need to be able to be proactive with their professional growth and instead of being comfortable employees need to willingly step out of their comfort zone and try new things. I agree with this line of thinking, heck I developed a blog and seminar called the Career Makeover, actively promoting the thought that the workforce is in charge of their own career development. That people need to actively receive training to develop new skills in an ever changing climate. I even suggested workers need to try to interview for other positions just to get a feel for what other organizations consider to be relevant skill sets, and to hear the type of processes and procedures used today. Readers should read my blog at http://cmwworkshop.blogspot.com/ especially as I develop more content.

As I sit back and digest the article and my own beliefs I also feel it is the responsibility of leaders to encourage their direct reports to receive training to develop new skill sets, ask them to read more (its ok if the reading is industry or non industry related), introduce them to the world of social media, and even be confident by inspiring co-workers to interview for other positions. Don't be afraid of change to your team, challenging people in a positive way, or for them to succeed. Leaders need to step up and provide a path for employees to follow. Development plans are crucial because this is where information can be gathered to see what each individual person is thinking as far as how they want their careers to progress.

I think this part of leadership and team development has become a lost art because today's business society is so results driven. All customers have to be serviced, survey results need to exceed expectations, dollars have to come in. Those are all necessary but they don't have to come at the expense of a team's development.

Sometimes people become stagnant or stale because they are afraid to try new things, or we just get comfortable because we are creatures of habit. At times we just lose sight of our own goals for our careers and we as leaders need to step away from daily demands for our organization and step up and let our team members know its acceptable to blossom professionally and create the best path for them to achieve new successes. SFNBJQ25JKNC

A New Beginning

About 3 years ago I created this blog while in graduate school.  I wanted to use this as a medium to share some of the leadership concepts I've learned, give my opinion of good leadership experiences, and to let my readers share their knowledge regarding leadership.  That was a wonderful idea but then I never followed through with my plan.  My blog sat idle for three long years.  Then the Blog-Train came along....

See this website made me blow the dust off of my blog and has given me the inspiration to try again.  Over the last three years I've graduated from school and have become a part time instructor for Stautzenberger Institute teaching customer service.  I have more wonderful experiences and have learned much over the last few years.  Work, and school have taught me plenty and I would like to begin again and share with my readers ideas surrounding leadership.  Please come along with me on this journey to see how this site evolves over time.

Listening Skills Are Crucial

I sat at my desk watching a video on my computer. As the video played I cracked open a book to read while the video played. I would then switch my attention between the video and book over the next 10 minutes. At that moment I had to laugh to myself because I was guilty of poor listening. I wasn't giving the video the attention it needed to enjoy it completely. Listening is a skill that so many leaders are told they need to improve and yet have difficulty mastering. I wasn't listening to a video now think about not listening to a person, we've all been there before,

An employee approaches their leader to discuss a current issue hoping for an immediate resolution. The discussion starts off strong but then the leader's phone rings and they look to see who's calling. The leader apologizes for the distraction and asks the employee to continue. Another minute into the conversation you notice the leader looking at their computer hoping to see what that darn e-mail says. When the leader sees the employee getting frustrated they turn towards the employee trying to listen, but starts yawning, looking away, or day dreaming as they stare at the employee with a hypnotized look. The employee then walks away in frustration knowing that leader heard maybe a minute of their conversation.

I know I'm guilty of not listening to an employee that reported to me like in the example above. That employee lost confidence in me as a leader, feeling irritated, frustrated, and not important. That's why listening completely is crucial for leadership. Listening helps build confidence, makes people feel good, motivates, increases job satisfaction, and increases self-worth.

Some tips that has helped me be a better listener are,

• Keep Eye Contact
• Ask questions about topics pertaining to the conversation
• Keep an open posture. Make the person feel you are approachable
• Avoid looking at a ringing phone or the computer while in conversation
• Offer possible resolutions when asked
• Offer follow up to see the progress made from these suggested resolutions

Listening takes discipline and is a learned skill, especially with all the possible distractions in an office. It requires that the leader focuses all of their attention to the conversation. Committing to this kind of focus and listening increases a leader's effectiveness and can make them feel good about the job they're doing.

President Obama-A Transformational Leader

I picked up the newspaper today and found an article that is becoming a consistent story, President Obama reaches out to a country, this time Cuba, to communicate, listen, and ease some of the tension currently existing between the two nations. This is one example of how the President is using transformational leadership in his first term. This isn't a posting to judge his policies, programs, or the President himself. It is to early to do that anyway and meant for a political blog. This is to show that President Obama is trying to lead by transforming the nation's image.

Some of the characteristics associated with being transformational includes, charisma, being inspirational and motivational, and providing intellectual stimulation (Northouse, 2007, p. 182). In my opinion President Obama is showing these characteristics by offering an olive branch to Cuba, Iran, Mexico, Russia, and Turkey. The transformation is going from labeling countries and branding them as automatic enemies to communication to see if there are some commonalities that exist to ease some tension and hatred.

Out of the characteristics listed above my favorite one is providing intellectual stimulation. That's the stage the olive branch being offered by President Obama is at. Peter Northouse from the book Leadership Theory And Practice explains that this means to reach out and challenge a belief system, be creative, and innovative(Northouse, 2007, p. 183). In my opinion from the articles I see this has been a central theme in President Obama's message.

The ultimate step though is being successful in the transformation. Here at home, one example of success, can mean transforming our nation from being a strong manufacturing country to a green, environmental based nation. We can measure the stimulus money payouts to see how it is used and its effectiveness. Measuring success abroad is tough. My thought is success will mean sustained positive, intellectual communication with each nation mentioned. Having tensions go back 40 to 50 years means it is unrealistic to think these countries will be strong allies in the next 4 years. Transformation takes time, and I'm willing to give President Obama all the time he needs to see how far he can get.

Path-Goal Theory A Favorite

One of my favorite leadership theories that I've learned about is the path-goal theory. I came across this leadership model in the text Leadership Theory And Practice by Peter G. Northouse. I prefer this model because this is designed for leaders to define goals, clarify a path, remove obstacles, and provide support (Northouse, 2007, p.128). Looking at this model I see a few things that I believe management should stand for.

The first is to define goals. Too many times do team members lose focus of why they are completing tasks. People want to know what the departmental and organizational goals are at all times. This first step takes discipline by leaders to maintain consistency because whether it is admitted or not leaders at times can lose focus as well, or they can become too results oriented forgetting the importance of the path of a task in getting to the end.

The last three components of this model, clarifying a path, removing obstacles, and providing support all define a leader that thrives in the area of development. The act of blaming others for errors is thrown out and replaced with themes of motivation and coaching. Developing talent, motivating people to strive for their best, and allowing for others to complete tasks defines the path-goal theory and one of the reasons to become involved with leadership.

Executives-Spend Time With Your Department

I've been hearing from one of my executive leaders over the past week quite a bit. Seems that the call center I analyze for hasn't been reaching the goal of an 80% service level and answering calls in 20 seconds. The actual performance has been around a 70-73 % service level with calls being answered at a 40 second average. So of course I've been getting questioned. We're all familiar with them, "What's going wrong?", "Why aren't we achieving the goal?", "How we going to fix it?". Now don't get me wrong, I don't mind the questions. Executives have every right to know why performance is lacking, and how problems will be fixed. The frustration I have is that is the only time I hear from this leader.

My thought is spend time with the department from time to time. I understand executives need to focus on setting strategic direction for the organization so I'm not expecting side by side mentoring. Visits should be made when things go good. Ask why goals are being met to compare different situations with each other. Praise for a good job every now and again is nice, perhaps speak at department team meetings so staff becomes more comfortable and cohesive.

Every leadership book or article talks about communication by all levels of leadership. Make that communication consistent and fair. Communicate with departments during good and bad times to get maximum effort from them at all times and so they'll take ownership of challenging situations.