Hope everyone is starting the New Year with greatness and rejuvenation. Let’s get right into this next leadership series blog on the Leading of People.
Over all these years, management still talks about the importance of front-line employees and how an organization’s success lies in their hands. What they forget to take in consideration is that these same employees feel untrusted, undervalued, unappreciated, and unchallenged. The workers claim that they have all this input and feedback to give, but no one is listening. This regrettably leads to the most significant waste in most organizations; which is the waste of human potential by the results from the way management has chosen to organize and lead, according to Heil, Parker, and Tate, authors of Leadership and the Customer Revolution.
They continue to say that while frustration in organizations continues to exist, resources are spent on developing plans to address the issues through the utilization of surveys. These actions to improve employee satisfaction are not far off from the actions that created the situation in the first place – more recognition practices, more pay-for-performance systems, and more celebrations. Well, the “more of” philosophy has flown out the door. Gaining compliance has been exceptionally well, but the fact is that there needs to be better capturing of commitment in the workforce. The importance of employee satisfaction needs to be stimulated by empowerment and maximizing the learning values. Simply focusing on the quantity of output from a person and less on the quality of that person’s performance is not an effective practice.
“Mentoring someone is not creating them in your own image, but giving them the opportunity to create themselves” - Steven Spielberg
A good leader develops and evolves through hard work and consistent effort; they are not just born. A leader is a role model for many people and leads by example. One who coordinates work, resolves conflicts, and promotes growth and development. An effective leader acts as an advocate for others, motivates them, and brings out the best in them; is comfortable with taking charge and giving instructions; is a collaborator or coach who acknowledges other people’s ideas about how work can be done more efficiently and listens to those ideas at every opportunity.
A team leader is one who can cultivate a relationship with a group by helping the team raise its collective self-awareness. By creating an emotionally intelligent team, a leader has the power to establish norms and maximize harmony. (Rules that are called norms are relevant to teams, and when referring to a large organization called culture). In order for a leader to extend emotional intelligence throughout a team and organization, they start by taking a hard look at reality, rather than focusing first on an ideal vision, according to Daniel Goleman author of Primal Leadership: Realizing the Power of Emotional Intelligence.
Goleman continues to say that this sequence of reflection and self-discovery is reversed as the individual level, simply because it is a matter of motivation. Individuals feel motivated to change when they tap into their dreams and ideal visions of their lives, giving them the energy and commitment to do so. For a group ideal vision, however, the concept of changing applies when they have fully grasped the reality by how they function, which is done by understanding their emotional reality. A leader can uncover a group’s emotional reality by observing important signals, listening to what is really going on in the group, and knowing how they feel. When reality and the ideal vision are aligned, it is possible for more change to take place within the group.
Thanks for reading the Leading of People series blog. The next blog will finish up the series with Leadership Styles. Please follow us on Facebook and on Twitter.
