MANAGERIAL LEADERSHIP IN
Step 10: Keep your action plan alive. I have worked with many managers who were quite serious about enhancing their leadership
practices only to find that desire evaporate over a relatively short period of time. After all, while you may be focused on changing your behaviors, the people around you will function in the same old ways. The corporate culture will not change, nor will your managers behave much differently. There won’t be a lot of reinforcement ini
tially for your efforts, but there may be some resentment. Thus, you
182 Managerial Leadership in Action
have to work on self-motivation. Here are five tricks of the trade that can help you avoid the evaporation effect.
1. Physically place your action plan where you will see it reg
ularly. For example, I keep mine in the middle desk draw
er. I frequently open this drawer to get pens or paper clips.
I do not review the action plan every time I open the draw
er, but I am constantly visibly reminded of its existence. If you put the action plan in a file folder that is subsequently put in a file cabinet, it will have a very short half-life. Keep it visible.
2. Find someone who will serve as your “sponsor”—but not your boss, your best friend, or your spouse. It does not have to be someone inside the company, but it could be.
Just choose someone you trust who will help remind you of your commitment to the action plan. Give a copy to your sponsor and schedule a date and time for that person to contact you no more than three months out to see how you are progressing.
3. Schedule a second round of feedback using the same assessment instruments you used initially. This should pro
vide you with good comparative pretest-posttest informa
tion. You need to give yourself a reasonable amount of time before conducting this follow-up round of feedback in order to work on the behavioral changes. While there is no industry standard, the typical range for the interval between assessments is 9 to 12 months.
4. Build your development efforts into your everyday activi
ties as much as possible. We all complain about not having enough time to get everything accomplished that is asked of us. Thus, adding development activities to the list of things to do is unlikely to happen. Rather than adding more tasks, reframe your current activities to incorporate the items on your action plan. One of the managers at UNUM told me this was a very important concept for him.
Delegation and openness to new ideas were two of the items he was addressing in his leadership development plan. He was finding it hard to come up with new activities
that specifically addressed those items. When I suggested he look to his everyday tasks, the solution became appar
ent. He changed the way he approached his weekly staff meetings by making them more of a forum for discussion than a vehicle for pronouncing his views. And he rotated the responsibility for planning the meetings among his associates as part of his focus on delegation.
5. Be kind to yourself through this difficult process. Reward yourself for the progress you make and do not be too hard on yourself when you regress into old behavioral patterns.
You cannot expect to make consistent, steady progress. For every few steps forward, anticipate at least one step back.
Just because it seems simple doesn’t mean it is easy to accomplish. The important thing is to keep working on it.
Your action plan is a dynamic document—review it often and revise it when necessary. Take pleasure in the moments when you notice a positive change in your leadership prac
tices and remain steadfast in your determination to improve when you notice a slip backward.
STAYING ON THE PATH
Remember that this is a journey—one that will last a lifetime. The joy is in the travel and seeing the new sights as you go. My path has been highly rewarding, and simple things can trigger a sense of profound satisfaction. A few years ago, during my time in South Carolina, I was traveling through the Charlotte Airport in North Carolina with a colleague. Just by chance, I ran across an acquain
tance, Janet, who had worked with me for a few years at the University of North Carolina. She was traveling with her husband on their way to a prospective job interview. After a brief exchange of pleasantries and catching up on family news, Janet said she enjoyed working for me more than for any other manager for whom she had ever worked. And she just wanted to be sure to thank me for that experience.
We don’t realize the impact we have on other people, espe
cially at work. We spend more time (awake) per week with our
184 Managerial Leadership in Action
coworkers than we do with our spouses and children. The inter
personal dynamics we experience on the job have a huge effect on our mental health and well-being. As a “boss,” I am constantly amazed at the power of my words among my staff. I can make a statement that was meant as a flip remark, or an off-the-cuff com
ment, that causes a huge reaction in the office—sometimes for days to come! As managerial leaders, we do not fully appreciate the influence we have over our peers and associates. It is different from the CEO’s influence. It is in many ways more powerful than the CEO’s influence because it is much more personal.
Case in point: Recently, I was scheduling an overseas trip at a Delta Air Lines ticket office near my home. One of the ticket agents was lightheartedly talking with his colleagues about the “Leo Letter” he had just received congratulating him on his years of service at Delta. I recognized that he was referring to their CEO, Leo Mullin. The agent’s colleagues were kidding him by saying that Leo’s signature at the bottom of the letter was a stamp, not an original. Some congratulations. The agent was similarly amused and enjoying his colleagues’ laughter. After all, Leo Mullin does not have a relationship with this ticket agent and probably never will. But if the agent’s direct supervisor had sent him a form letter that was equally impersonal, I am confident the agent would have been upset. And his colleagues would have spoken with him about it without using humor—it would have been a much different con
versation.
I do not want to exaggerate my importance to the people with whom I work, but neither do I want to underappreciate it. Every time I am able to improve my leadership effectiveness, it has a pos
itive effect on many other people. The same is true for you. Be the best managerial leader that you can be—for your own sake, for the sake of your colleagues and associates, and for the betterment of your organization. You can make a significant difference.
QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES
• Identify both the organizational and personal resources you can utilize to help you achieve your goals. Think broadly, and ask others to help you determine the compa- ny’s resources that could be of service to you.
• Identify the organizational barriers that will make it more difficult for you to follow through on your action plan.
How can you overcome or work around these barriers?
• Identify the personal barriers or distractions that will make it more difficult for you to follow through on your action plan. Whom can you enlist to help you overcome the barri
ers to progress that you create?
• Create a dynamic time line for your career path. Start at the point where you first entered the work force as a salaried (exempt) employee. Once you get to your current position, draw your preferred path for the next 5 years, the next 10 years. Where will this lead you? Is this where you want to be in 10 years? How will enhancing your leadership effec
tiveness help you get where you want to go?
• Identify at least one leadership development activity you will experience this year (in addition to reading this book).
What do you need to do in order to make sure you get that experience?
A P P E N D I X A
Bibliography and Suggested Readings
Auerbach, Red, and Ken Dooley. MBA: Management by Auerbach.
Bennis, Warren, and Burt Nanus. Leaders: The Strategies for Taking Charge.
New York: Harper & Row, 1985.
Blanchard, Ken. How Leaders Lead. 1995.
———, and Spencer Johnson. The One Minute Manager. 1993.
Collins, James. “Level 5 Leadership.” Harvard Business Review, Vol. 79, No.
1, January 2001, pp. 66–76.**
———, and Jerry I. Porras. Built to Last. New York: Harper-Business, 1997.
Covey, Stephen R. The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. New York:
Fireside, 1990.
Drucker, Peter. The Practice of Management.
Furakawa, Atsushi. Transcultural Management. San Fransisco: Jossey-Bass, 1997.
Goleman, Daniel. Emotional Intelligence. New York: Bantam Books, 1995.
———. “What Makes a Leader?” Harvard Business Review, 1998.**
Herzberg, Frederick. The Motivation to Work. 1959.**
Hofstede, Geert. Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind, rev. ed.
London: McGraw-Hill, 1997.**
Homer. The Odyssey, translated by Robert Fitzgerald. Noonday Press, 1998.
Kohlberg, Lawrence. Essays on Moral Development. San Fransisco: Harper &
Row, 1981.
Kotter, John. The Leadership Factor. New York: Free Press, 1988.
Kouzes, James, and Barry Possner. The Leadership Challenge. San Fransisco: Jossey-Bass, 1996.**
MacKenzie, Gordon. Orbiting the Giant Hairball. New York: Viking Press, 1996.
Maslow, Abraham. Toward a Psychology of Being, 2nd ed. New York: Van Nostrand, 1968.
Moran, Robert T. Managing Cultural Differences. Gulf Publishing, 1988.
National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future. What Matters Most:
Teaching for America’s Future. Commission Final Report, 1996.
“The New Post-Heroic Leadership.” Fortune, cover story. February 21, 1994.**
Peters, Tom. In Search of Excellence. San Fransisco: Warner Books, 1988.**
**This reference is a highly recommended reading.
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Roberts, Wess. Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun. New York: Warner Books, 1991.
Ronen, S., and Oded Shenkar. “Clustering Variables: The Application of Non Metric Multivariate Analysis Techniques in Comparative Management Research.” International Studies of Management and Organization, Vol.28, No.3, Fall 1988, pp. 72–78.
Roper Starch Worldwide. Employee Review: Insights into Workforce Attitudes.
Research report sponsored by Randstad North America, 2000.
Slater, Robert. The GE Way Fieldbook. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2000.
Smith, Dean E., with John Kilgo and Sally Jenkins. A Coach’s Life. New York:
Random House, 1999.**
Tichy, N., and Ram Charan. “Speed, Simplicity, Self-Confidence.” Harvard Business Review reprint No. 89513, September–October 1989.**
**This reference is highly recommended reading.
A P P E N D I X B
Samples of 360°
Feedback Profiles
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Appendix B 191
Appendix B 193
Appendix B 195