Fear at 360 Degrees…

To unlock the power of the 360 degree feedback process a manager must either be well prepared to navigate through gap analysis and a host of comparative data or should be flanked by a coach throughout the debriefing period.

It is easy for a manager who feels untrained when it comes to giving feedback to fall into some of the common traps that have given the 360 degree feedback a bad reputation in the past.  Feedback that mentions “who said what” or focuses solely on the weaknesses of an employee without being careful to offer a balanced feedback may do more harm than good and be easily overwhelmed by the quantitative measurements. If the desired result of a 360 degree feedback process is to improve the behavior of employees or leaders, then it is vital that the feedback be as accurate, balanced and relevant as possible.

While all this sounds like common sense, are you able to distill the meaning of the results of a 360 degree feedback in a professional and constructive manner? Or do you find it to be a personal affair?

Questions to ponder:

• Have you ever struggled with giving a balanced feedback?
• Do you have an anecdotal vignette to share?

Suggestions:

• Partnering with coaches can provide long term benefits in the professional development of your employees, leaders and ultimately your organization.
• Using 360 Degree Feedback tools that have been custom build for your organization can make all the difference.

3 Tips for Executive Development

Leaders are suffering from their own business hangover. During our recent political in-fighting and economic uncertainty, businesses have had their nose to the grindstone striving to do more with less. Everyone was so focused on surviving and cutting, they're just now looking up and realizing they have no clear next steps, limited vision and no energy.

AmyK, who has worked with Martha Beck (Oprah's Life Coach, bestselling author and columnist for O), National Geographic, IBM, John Paul Mitchell Systems, to name a few, offers you, our readers, these three quick and easy tips for executive development that any business leader can practice to immediately improve his/her leadership performance:

• Focus on energy, not time. Time is a constant; energy is a manageable, renewable resource. What's sucking out your energy and what refuels it? Your answers will influence your strategy for energy management within the constraints of time.
• Leadership happens one conversation at a time. Slow down and ask better questions. Focus on thought-provoking questions over reports. In meeting prep, devote at least five minutes to think of three to five questions that will lead to a more productive, more thought-provoking meeting. These five minutes will save you hours down the road.
• Create internal alignment. Step back and ask yourself: What am I resisting? What am I judging? What am I attached to? Answer these three questions and you'll gain clarity, insight and a foundation for momentum.

About our Guest Author:

With over 700 presentations to 20,000+ executives in seven countries, AmyK Hutchens serves as an Intelligent Activist and business strategist to leaders around the globe. AmyK is a former senior EVP of operations for a leading sales and marketing firm, director of education for Europe and Australia for a 900 million dollar consumer products company, and chosen member of National Geographic's Educator Advisory Committee. She is the winner of five Telly Marketing Awards and the Summit International's Award for Creativity (2008) and a featured guest on NBC, Fox and ABC for her brain-based commentary on current events.

Leadership Roles: a process of co-construction

A new research article published in Academy of Management Review suggests that leadership identities are assumed by individuals in an organization through a process of co-construction. The mechanism appears to work as follows. In their social interactions, individuals either claim, grant or, it would seem, assign leader and follower identities to themselves and, relationally, to their colleagues. According to the paper's authors, "through this claiming-granting process, individuals internalize an identity as leader or follower, and those identities become relationally recognized through reciprocal role adoption and collectively endorsed within the organizational context."

It is not enough if every time during a team meeting, one member of the team takes it upon herself to delegate the majority of the tasks discussed to her peers. What is needed is co-construction. That is, in order for the team member who does the delegating to assume the identity of "leader", her peers must submit to the delegation; they must "grant" that the identity / role is appropriate through reciprocal adoption of the role of follower. By assuming the role of follower, they, in turn, confer a leadership identity upon the other. Thus, their roles are co-constructed. It takes two to make a leader.

How does this conceptualization of leadership challenge received wisdom on the topic of leadership development? Further, how does this affect our methods of identifying high potentials in the organization?

DeRue, D. Scott; Ashford, Susan J.. Academy of Management Review, Oct2010, Vol. 35 Issue 4, p627-647

You can also join the discussion of this topic on our facebook page.

Trait-Based Leadership VS. Situation-Based Leadership (Part 3 of 3)

The problem that such a conception of leadership comes up against is that the five “traits” outlined above are vague enough to be mapped onto almost any historical “Leader” while at the same time too vague to be taken into a board room. It is one thing to say that a leader must pursue their purpose with passion and quite another thing to somehow convince a room full of people that it is in their best interest, as well as in the company’s best interest, to pursue one man’s purpose with passion. However, it may seem a bit presumptuous to simply claim that the five “traits” that we have just mentioned are, in fact, not necessary for a good leader, for, as history has shown us, most every great “leader” that comes to mind has exemplified a few, if not all of these “traits”. How then to we reconcile these opposing claims: that leadership is situation based and that leadership is trait based.

Well, what it seems to really come down to is that in order to be a successful leader, one must somehow synthesize these competing views of leadership. That is, a good leader must survey a situation and come to an understanding of the unique situational factors that form it. Once one has assessed the situational factors that determine any given context, it becomes possible to employ the “traits” necessary to earn the trust and commitment of the individuals involved in a particular situation. In other words, being able to accurately identify the situational factors present in any given context gives a leader insight into how best to approach a problem. So, for example, when a situation involves a group of people, being able to seamlessly integrate oneself into the group’s identity is of absolute importance. Once, this is accomplished, it is far easier to get the commitment of the group and so to exercise any number of “traits”, be it pursuing the group’s purpose with passion or practicing solid values. Nevertheless, whatever the situation may be, a person with a set stock of “leadership traits” will not be the least bit affective if he or she does not correctly identify the situational factors that undergird every situation.

Bottom line: if you can correctly identify the situational factors in any situation, then learning what the correct action to take in such a situation is no different that learning a new skill. That’s not to say that a little charisma and self-discipline won’t prove useful either.

Trait-Based Leadership VS. Situation-Based Leadership (Part 2 of 3)

In a paper titled “The New Psychology of Leadership”, authors Stephen Reicher, Alexander Haslam, and Michael Platow, attempt to explain why what we commonly think of as effective leadership is, in fact, the result of something more akin to a situation-based theory of leadership.

In the 1960’s and 1970’s scholars began to embrace the idea that, what we have referred to as the “Born Leader” is nothing more than a myth. Rather, “scholars began to favor ‘contingency models,’ which focus on the context in which leaders operate.” (Reicher 2) In their paper, Stephen Reicher, Alexander Haslam and Michael Platow, explain that, since the research of Henri Tajfel and John C. Turner in the 1970’s, which subsequently led to Tajfel’s coining of the term “social identity”, leadership theories have begun to focus more on the “Leader’s” ability to induce followers to see themselves as part of a group, to embrace a kind of social identity that is akin not only to the other group members conception of self but also to the business’s identity as a whole. In other words, “[s]ocial identities make group behavior possible: they enable us to reach consensus on what matters to us, to coordinate our actions with others and to strive for shared goals.” (Reicher 3)

Given that group behavior hinges on social identities, the task of a good leader is to identify with that social identity, “rather than assuming absolute authority”, and our leader does this by coming to “understand the values and opinions of [his or her] followers” which, in turn, enables “a productive dialogue with [subordinates] about what the group embodies and stands for and thus how it should act.” (Reicher 1) In this sense, it seems as though it is not necessary for a good leader to possess a fixed set of traits given that “the most desirable traits depend on the nature of the group being led.” (Reicher 2) In other words, what is necessary for an individual to be a strong leader is dependant entirely on the situation.

While “The New Psychology of Leadership” focuses specifically on a leader’s ability to become “one of the gang” it does emphasize the necessity for a very definite shift from “Charisma to Consensus”, from a stock set of “Leadership traits” to a sensitivity for the situational factors necessary for the formation of a strong group identity.

Yet there are many that still believe that leadership is defined by how well an individual demonstrates any number of “traits”. For example, last year, in his short op-ed piece in U.S. News and World Report, Bill George claimed that there are, in fact, five “traits” that identify an “authentic leader”. Those “traits”, according to George, are as follows:

• Pursuing their purpose with passion.
• Practicing solid values.
• Leading with their heart as well as their head.
• Establishing connected relationships.
• Demonstrating self-discipline.

Bill George goes on to clarify that “[t]o be effective leaders of people, authentic leaders must first discover the purpose of their leadership. If they don’t, they are at the mercy of their egos and narcissistic impulses… The values of authentic leaders are shaped by their personal beliefs and developed through introspection, consultation with others, and years of experience.” (George 1)

To Be Continued...

Trait-Based Leadership VS. Situation-Based Leadership (Part 1 of 3)

In reaction to "Understanding the Nature of Talent", I have decided to embark on a 3 part adventure.

There must, of course, be a difference between trait-based leadership and situation-based leadership. While the difference between the two may seem, at once, strikingly obvious, a recognition as to which “type” of leadership is the most appropriate and, ultimately, most beneficial for the development of “business” is, in the same moment, less than clear.

History offers us innumerable examples of both trait-based leadership and situation-based leadership. During the industrial revolution, as hoards of former farmers flocked to the cities, we see, really for the first time in our country’s history, an overwhelming demand for strong leadership across nearly every industry. The need for professional “team leaders” was, of course, augmented by high demand for the fast, efficient, as well as quality controlled, production of nearly everything imaginable for the growth of a nation, including war materials. As soldiers returned from the Second World War, it became clear that there was, in fact, a substantial difference between the leadership practices that were employed by the Pattons, Grants and Washingtons (the pseudo-mythical conception of the Born Leader) and the Henry Fords and Rockefellers who had spurred success not so much by infiltrating the hearts and minds of those under them, but by recognizing the significance of various aspects of their own contemporary matrix and capitalizing on them.

Whether the successes of the Henry Fords and the Rockefellers were enough to demystify our view of leadership and transform it from a trait-based to a situation-based conception remains to be seen. Even today, the myth of the Born Leader, is used to explain the successes of our nation’s greatest Presidents, corporate titans and the like. Nevertheless, there seems, in recent years, to have been the beginnings of a “shift” toward the conception of a leader as someone in possession of a number of skills, learned skills, and so, the conception of leadership as something that can be developed in anyone willing to learn.

To Be Continued...