How to Make Sound Decisions
With increasing authority and autonomy in organisations comes the responsibility to make sound decisions; often with incomplete information. In addition, there is usually a degree of pressure to make quite complex decisions in a very limited time frame.
Unfortunately, there is no magic solution to this dilemma. We have to learn to trust ourselves to make good quality, timely decisions where often there are several unknowns. We build this trust in our ability over time, as we are challenged to think, and decide upon, more and more complex issues.
Dealing with Procrastination
Stepping Up Into a Senior Role
- The need to let go of being a technical expert and being operational/tactical
- Developing strategic leadership behaviours and the associated flexibility
- Switching to strategic thinking and decision making
- Re-negotiating the relationships with direct reports who used to be peers
Holding People Accountable Isn't Bullying
Achieving Team Efficiency
Today all businesses have embraced the concept of teamwork, based on the assumption that a team of people can be more productive than the sum of its parts. Yet few businesses have started to look at team effectiveness and even fewer at team efficiency. Putting a team of people together and giving the team a common task does not ensure effectiveness or efficiency. In this article, we are going to explore these concepts in more detail and look at what it takes to create a high performing team.
Team effectiveness relates to the team’s ability to achieve its task or purpose. To assess effectiveness, the team’s purpose needs to be clearly understood. For example, a project team will typically have a clear purpose – to complete the project to specification, on time and on budget. Yet most operational teams we have encountered lack this clear sense of purpose. Whilst individuals know clearly what they are supposed to do, the team’s overall purpose is usually much less understood.
Comparing Behavioural Leadership Models
There are a great number of leadership models and assessment tools on the market. We believe a number of these share a common underlying structure, which points to something more fundamental. The commonality starts with the fact that these models look at dimensions of behaviour. This contrasts with other models - such as the MBTI - which look at baseline personality traits.
Definitive research by Professor Walter Mischel of Stanford University into the relationship of personality and behaviour shows that personality explains less than 10% of the variance in an individual’s behaviour. As humans, we are much more flexible and adaptable than our personality predicts. The drivers of a persons behaviour, he observed, are in fact the situations in which we find ourselves.
When to Have a Difficult Conversation
The majority of the 2,000 plus leaders we have assisted in our work over the past 10 years struggle with having difficult conversations. This is only natural, as we tend to get anxious around having to confront another person about inappropriate or performance blocking behaviours.
Leaders ask themselves: “What if I get it wrong?” or “What if the person gets defensive/emotional/ angry?” or “Will they still like me after I have this conversation?”. All of these are valid questions that are part of what is called the Identity Conversation. This is the self-talk we engage in prior to having a difficult conversation. But mainly we use this self-talk to convince ourselves not to have the conversation at all.
The result is quite predictable; the issue does not go away and the people affected get angrier as time goes by and no action is taken. The reason is that most people are not conscious of their behaviour. If nobody tells me that they have a problem with me talking too loud on the phone, I will never know that it’s an issue. Why? Because to me talking loudly is natural. The longer I don’t get confronted, the more convinced I am that it is ok. If nobody complains, everything must be fine.
