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Leadership

Don’t panic, its time to be calm and reflect

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It appears to be a very challenging time for the world right now, especially considering the coronavirus and the uncertainty ahead.  It has become clear that the coronavirus is worse than seasonal flu. Seasonal flu has a mortality rate of 0.1% and coronavirus mortality is varied depending on age, location and density of infected people.   So far, the mortality rate is anywhere between 1% to 2%.  The big difference is that seasonal flu is well researched and understood. 

 

Coronavirus is not yet understood and appears to act differently in different situations.   This uncertainty is a real challenge for our human brains and could perhaps account for the “frenzy” of varied news and views floating around.  The current preparation that we hear about through the media, appears to be aimed at a virus with a much greater impact than what the statistics suggest.

I have been through several crisis events is my lifetime, ranging from various stock market crashes, virus threats and violent uprisings. On reflection, I can see that none of these events were as bad as what we thought they would be.  So, what are the lessons here for us as individuals and as leaders of business?

 

  1. Our emotional system housed in our primitive brain are hard wired for us to experience negative events stronger than positive events. When we become emotional our almost rational brains further shut down and make flawed assumptions.    This process can send us on a downward out of control spiral.   This is a good time to stop, breath, reflect and examine the facts.   Organisational leaders have a key role to keep everyone aligned around a common purpose, communicating clearly to help clarify assumptions.   Tough times dealt with correctly can lead to new opportunities and growth, see them as such.
  2. Understand that the messages given to us, aren’t necessarily how we should hear them. Every one of our stakeholders packages the message differently.  As an example, anxiety sells news, so expect to hear the worst views in the news.   Political leaders need to show they have every base covered, because if they miss one situation, this mistake could easily lead to their exit.
  3. Organisations should not freeze or stop their future planning in tough times but rather see the opportunities and take time to prepare for the upswing. Many great paradigm shifts and new innovations have happened in tough times.   In the current situation, many conferences have been cancelled and many supply lines have been paused.   Experiment with new options, such as online conferencing/ webinars or look for equivalent or local supplies.   It’s a good time to discover new ways of doing things.

Use uncertain times such as these to learn resilience skills, exercise, reflect and inspire your teams with hope.  Stay calm and keep going back to the truth, the facts and numbers.   Remember, this too shall pass.

 

 

Read more about managing through anxiety: https://evolveconsult.uk/leadership-development/better-leadership-through-anxiety-management/

 

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How to build organisations that rule out the risks of bullying

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Corporate bullying seems to be on the rise, it damages people, brand, reputations and stops innovation dead in its tracks. Not dealing with bullying could result in an organisation that has elements of bullying in its culture. As per this thought provoking talk, a small percentage of society have psychopathic and narcissistic traits. People with these traits in organisations often successfully drive short-term profits as they will use any technique to get people to hit the numbers. In the long term however, the damage caused can come back to haunt the organisation. A properly structured and managed organisation could easily ensure that such individuals are spotted immediately and appropriately dealt with. What are some of the key elements any organisation requires to ensure they have the right managers at the right levels?:

  1. Roles and Responsibilities: Ensure that all people management roles include elements that clearly describe the outputs of their people management accountability’s. If their job spec only talks about the metrics they must achieve, and not what they must do to build a high performance team, the risk is they could turn to forceful methods to drive the numbers.
  2. Congruent Culture: It is the role of top management to ensure that the organisation is long-term viable based on profits, people and customers. The top are accountable to create an enabling environment where people can perform their best, while being treated as adults ( respectfully and with dignity) . The top must lead the conversation to co-create the ideal culture that is in tune with the organisational positioning and ensures the best level of staff engagement. Once this culture is agreed and codified into behavioural statements, it should be lived from the top and linked to the managers roles and performance management. As they say, you get what you measure!
  3. Performance Management: Once roles and responsibilities include managers full responsibilities (staff, metrics, customer) and are linked to the culture, best practice management would become a norm throughout the organisation.
  4. Talent management: Once roles and responsibilities are clear and the culture is clear and being modelled, the development and growth needs of people will become more apparent. People that are brilliant technically don’t always make good managers! The route to recognise and reward someone, should not necessarily be by making them a manager. It could rather be by acknowledging their performance as a specialist and pay them more in that role.

At the end of the day, if someone is bullied within an organisation, the buck must stop with the top management. There are of course many other factors that can assist to create more engaged and energised workforce’s. The list above is a very good place to start.

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Do you really believe in collaboration?

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Collaboration is about coming together with others and creating an output much bigger than the sum of the parts, typically a 1 + 1 = 3 scenario.  True collaboration therefore requires an abundance mindset, a view that there are enough resources and successes to share with others. The alternative is a scarcity mindset, which is founded on the idea that, if someone else wins or is successful in a situation, that means you lose. This does not consider the possibility of all parties winning (in some way or another) in a given situation.


Abundance is synonymous with the field of positive psychology, initially founded by Martin Seligman. Seligman and many subsequent researchers have empirically shown how marriages, teams and organisations flourish when an abundant and positive deviant mindset is present. Each of us can develop an abundant mindset, but this requires self-awareness, self-reflection and self-inquiry . Once the mindset is present, it can lead to feelings of empowerment, well-being, energy and appreciation for the good things that surround us.


Many of the modern businesses that are flourishing today, have achieved success through an abundance attitude. Think of Elon Musk, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, would they have achieved the successes they did, with a scarcity approach?

Now think about your mindset and that of your organisation?  Are these mindsets enabling the success of self and others?  What must change if not the case?


The mindsets of the top management in an organisation have a way of influencing the tone of the organisational culture, and hence the mindset of the organisation.  When organisations work on their strategies, there are two lenses they can use.  A Red Ocean strategy and a Blue Ocean strategy or possibly both. Many of the new highly successful entrants into the market today, tend to have followed a Blue Ocean strategy. These companies would include Uber, Amazon, South West Airlines to name a few.   In the context of this article, consider which of the two mentalities are needed to develop a Blue Ocean strategy? What does your organisation require?


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Leadership Wisdoms from Experienced CEO’s

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A while back in 2008, I was privileged to facilitate a number of discussions at the annual CEO Summit, a key event hosted and arranged by Dictum Publishing.

 

Each year a number of senior leaders are invited and given various pertinent topics to discuss and reflect on.  One of the topics had leaders reflecting on the barrage of paradoxes and contradictions that they face daily in this ever increasingly complicated world. I will use certain of the discussions to form the basis for this article.

 

The long versus the short

Businesses continually find themselves being pressured for short-term results yet many of the factors that influence these results require a longer term focus. The lower levels of every organisation are closest to the customers and the products and therefore have a key influence on profits. Factors that enable people, often seen as “soft factors” such as the organisational culture, communication, leadership styles, involvement, communication, change management, trust, congruence and vision therefore have a profound impact on profit. Considering the radical changes around us that we need to cope with daily, such as record high inflation rates, increasing world debt, global sustainability, unrest, increasing population rates, increasing poverty, government uncertainty etc, it can be very challenging to keep one’s eye on the long-term game while delivering in the short-term. We need to still minimise risk while encouraging entrepreneurship, deliver to strict timelines while maintaining a work-life balance, and look after and care for people while remaining lean and often right sizing. These are just a few of our challenges.

 

Talent

South Africa is currently experiencing a huge talent shortage, figures published show that the IT sector alone is short some 70 000 individuals at the moment.  Businesses now more than ever, need to look at how they retain, treat and develop talent. On the retention side, it is said that employees leave organisations for bad managers and that the organisational culture reflects the personality of the top leadership. This shows the need for a value system within the organisation that is lived at all levels, a system where people feel they are treated with dignity, respect and transparency. Leadership needs to be unleashed at all levels; people need to feel they are the Managing Directors of their positions. This is easier said than done, as top leadership sets the tone of the business and needs to model the values and behaviours that the business wishes to aspire to.

 

This is not always so easy, considering increasing daily pressures and challenges. South Africa’s talent shortage is related to our rapid growth as well as to many of the practices that suppressed people under the apartheid regime. As businesses we need to think differently to reduce our talent shortages. We cannot abdicate the responsibility to government to solve our talent crisis, the problem is just too large. Businesses need to also take up responsibility and leadership in this area. Businesses need to consider ways to employ people with the right aptitudes and attitudes and then through learnerships and other practices help skill up these people, which is a big commitment from the organisational side. What if these newly skilled people then find a better job? We need to think abundantly, if some of these people do indeed leave, then aren’t you helping the country to solve both skills and employment issues? If every company did this we would have come a long way towards solving many of our unemployment challenges.

 

Broadening scope of senior leadership

The scope of the role facing senior leadership seems to be broadening, organisations are increasingly being affected by national and even global issues such as environmental sustainability, poverty and unemployment, political stability, national talent shortages and energy issues to name a few. Today more than ever, organisational leadership is required to step beyond the traditional limits of their organisations and start dialogue with other organisations, industry bodies and government to help develop solutions to these challenges together.

At the same time, constant crisis and talent shortages pull senior leadership down to doing shorter term technical tasks, compressing the staff at lower levels and often creating vacuums of longer term work that is often being neglected, therefore increasing risk to the organisation.

 

Key skills for leadership today

The team I facilitated at the CEO Summit then came up with a number of skills, behaviours and attributes that they felt were vital to successfully managing an organisation today:

  1. Leaders must be able to master the ability to reflect as well as introspect even in times of crisis.
  2. The ability to tap into the views and perspectives of people that you trust.
  3. You need to always consult and reflect before making decisions, but then you need to make the right call. You need to have the ability to make the right call without being influenced by your personal ego.
  4. You need to find ways that work for you to consistently apply values. You need to think through the big picture on the backdrop of well defined morals and values.
  5. You need to develop a statesperson approach to building networks and creating conversations across industries and sectors, don’t wait for others, you must lead the way.

Being a leader of organisations and people is indeed a complex task, which in itself is a challenge that we face today. We know that leaders are not born but made, yet most of the attributes and skills of a good leader can only be learnt over time through experience and trial and error. Companies today need to pay urgent attention to creating opportunities for people to learn how to lead themselves and others.,

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Time to talk

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When times become tougher for businesses, either due to economic recession or other industry related challenges, senior leadership often fall into the trap of instituting radical knee jerk remedies but often neglect to create a place and time for others within the organisation to align with the need to change as well as to raise differing perspectives that could hold opportunity.

However frightening the financial results and projections may be, the cold truth is that the very people who know the answers to operating more efficiently, are those that are closer to the customers and products, and are the people lower down in the organisation.

 

This new world of work that we find ourselves in, has lead to a highly competitive landscape where quality, service, innovation and differentiation are key to enter the market, but not always remain there. The complexity of business today means that we need to have all the resources aligned, and leadership leveraged at all levels within the organisation.

In any organisation with numerous employees, there is a natural differentiation of roles and responsibilities. Those individuals at the lowest levels are more narrowly focussed and tend to be closer to the product and/or service offered by the company. As we move towards the top tier of leadership, we move further away from product detail but we have a broader view of the organisation, deal with longer term milestones and more abstract concepts.

 

The higher the level the leadership roles become, the more important the need to work to align key internal and external stakeholders and to constantly understand the changing competitive landscape in the future in order to lead the organisation to make subtle directional changes in the present. In order to become an agile or learning organisation, all the resources in the organisation needs to understand the greater vision and own the components of it that they can contribute towards. All the resources in the organisation need to be aligned with each other and be fully engaged and be able to execute their leadership influences both up and down within the organisation. 

 

Untapped opportunities that lie within organisations can be leveraged by individuals and teams who can learn to enter dialogue to be able to raise dissenting and paradoxical views, the very perspectives that hold the key to innovation and competitive practices. Great disconnects in understanding often exist between levels in the organisation, lower levels may not agree with the level above or know certain information that higher levels may require. Lower levels often deem it unsafe to exercise influence higher up in the organisation and therefore hold back their contributions. From my experience working with numerous senior management teams, I am often surprised to find out just how little conversation is had between team members and differing levels within the organisation. 

 

On numerous occasions I have witnessed highly experienced and highly skilled individuals become almost paralysed and the very thought of having to influence others in more senior roles in their organisations. I am left with the thought that great competitive advantage exists for organisations that can somehow create a place where people can simply talk to each other despite their position, perceived rank or any other reason that may block simple discussion.

 

Leaders often dismiss the skills of listening, dialogue and coaching as simply soft skills without realising the powerful impact they may have on the organisation. One of the reasons for this is that many of these so called soft skills can take a very long time to master and cannot simply be learned cognitively or by reading the text book. They need to be practiced and learned experientially and over a relatively long period with much trial and error. Leaders must be prepared to acknowledge their incompetence in this regard in order to start learning, a startling challenge for some, but confirming that humility is indeed a very powerful leadership trait.

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