Tag: Leadership Development
What does empathic leadership mean?
Definition from @ftlexicon (Financial Times Lexicon): “Empathic leadership is the ability of leaders to understand, relate to and be sensitive to customers, colleagues and communities. Sociopathic leadership, on the other hand is arrogant, self-centred, insensitive and manipulative.
The empathic leader will try to understand why their customers want to buy into their brand, not simply in a soft, touchy-feely way but literally from their point of view – from standing in their shoes. This brings a powerful and compelling aspect to the design, build and delivery of any product or service, the holy grail of business success and one reason why some brands are market leaders, but most are not.
Empathic leadership is not however, an easy path. For a start it goes against the myth of the hero leader. It’s not about ego, it’s about humility. It’s not about fulfilling personal agendas, it’s about helping customers, colleagues and communities to lead better lives.”
http://lexicon.ft.com/Term?term=empathic-leadership
You don’t get to control it all. But choosing simpliciy whenever possible adds to life an element of deepest freedom (…) and many opportunities to discover that less might actually be more.
Jon Kabat-Zinn – Wherever you go, there you are.
About people skills and empathic leadership
In on of my last posts I have discussed how leadership can have a real impact on ‘human capital’ in a world that seems to rotate faster every day. As a conclusion, I said that every leader can make a real difference if he/she is able to create the conditions that allow qualified staff members to feel at ease at their workplace and identify with the corporate culture. But what does it take to “lead through example”? How can you foster the so important climate of trust and transparency, allowing for growth and personal satisfaction? I guess that there is no standard answer to this question as every person leads in a very particular way bringing distinct results to a specific type of situation.
For me personally, the most important skill set to have and to make use of when leading are the so called ‘people skills’. Whereas non-existent in many dictionaries, there are a number of definitions around such as: “the ability to communicate effectively with people in a friendly way, especially in business” [1] or:
- “understanding ourselves and moderating our responses
- talking effectively and empathizing accurately
- building relationships of trust, respect and productive interactions.”[2]
Together with other social or interpersonal skills such as listening, communication etc., mastering people skills and even becoming a “people’s person”[3] will help you motivate and drive your employees achieving better results than ever before. In applying these skills to your day-to-day life, you will find that suddenly you will be leading simply with charisma and empathy and that there is actually no need to create an atmosphere and culture of fear as can be observed unfortunately in many enterprises nowadays, public and private sector alike.
Especially in matrix environments where leaders need to engage with members of “virtual teams”, who are not necessarily their direct reports and could be based anywhere in the world plus where communication happens mostly exclusively through e-mail, calls and video-conferences, social skills are more important than ever to achieve results and objectives.[4] In fact, the ability to create and foster quality networks, to ‘think outside of the box’ and to create a climate of exchange, knowledge sharing and trust while leading is of major importance for providing direction and innovation to any company. So while it is certainly not easy to build up relationships and interact closely with people, the loyalty and positive attitude that come out of these skills and leadership style are more than rewarding.
Many companies and enterprises though still need to acknowledge the importance of people skills and consequent leadership behaviors instead of relying solely on extrinsic motivation measures and tactics. If more people started to lead and manage this way, work place happiness and work-life balance would certainly see a major improvement… to be continued!
[1] Macmillan Dictionary, http://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/people-skills, Retrieved June 2012
[2] Portland Business Journal by Harriet Rifkin: http://www.bizjournals.com/portland/stories/2002/06/03/focus6.html
[3] Oxford Online Dictionary: “a person who enjoys or is particularly good at interacting with others”
[4] Also compare with : Rick Lash: “Leadership Essentials for the matrix environment”, http://www.greatleadershipbydan.com/2012/06/leadership-essentials-for-matrix.html?m=1
Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever
Mahatma Ghandi
Strategy or no strategy, that’s the question
Nowadays many people are asking why time should be lost at writing or even thinking about strategies: nobody reads them and sooner rather than later if not directly, they will find their way to the bin. Well, the simple answer here is that most of the people simply don’t understand what a strategy is and what it does. Not only is a strategy an ideal way to put your thoughts into a structured framework and make them more tangible; no, it also gives you a powerful tool at hand that will help you sell your ideas and plans in a very professional and successful manner.
Let me explain this to you: imagine you are asked to drive a new product launch and all you have are highly interesting and valid but loosely tied bits and pieces of your product managers, your marketing people and your engineers. How are you going to convince your customers – let alone your internal stakeholders who are first on the list to be aligned – of the added value of your product if there is no thread, no thoroughly reflected and grounded path and no story? Well, it’s difficult…
On the other hand, even if every single milestone you undertake while writing a strategy, will confront you inevitably with new questions, issues and problems, this will only allow you to dig deeper and to find out the true value proposition that will create the ‘wow’ effect in your customer’s eyes. So yes, time consuming it is, but in the end, the outcome rewards all efforts!
Let’s take a quick look at how a strategic document could be structured (only general categories are reproduced here, in practice, many more of course exist):
1. Current Situation/Background
2. Alignment to Global or Segment Strategy
4. General Objectives (qualitative/quantitative)
3. Specific Objectives
– Long term objectives (could be external or internal)
– Short term objectives (could be external or internal)
4. Target Markets and Audiences
5. Analysis of competition (how are they positioned, how do they communicate?)
6. Communication Plan (including the appropriate comms. vehicles and key messages)
7. Evaluating Success
8. Tactical calendar
9. Budget
If you follow this simple guideline also involving if possible your mangers in the thought process (this obviously includes summarizing and structuring what you have received from your colleagues or reaching out to them), you will have all the pre-requisites for a successful launch, introduction or campaign. Not only will you generate the buzz and buy-in you need internally to get things done, but your external appearance on the market will also be a true experience and hence a success. Try it and you won’t be disappointed!
Mindful Leadership
Jon Kabat–Zinn: “You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf”
How Leadership Can Have a Real Impact on “Human Capital”
In a world that seems to rotate faster every day and in which the words “globalisation” and “digitalisation” play prominent roles in all areas, one factor becomes more and more important for every leader: the promotion and the continuing education of their motivated and qualified employees. Within a global economy, in which the financial resources are not the only necessary conditions able to ensure a competitive advantage, another form of capital, the “human capital” is more and more valorised. As the 15th Annual Global CEO Survey, carried out by PricewaterhouseCoopers found out, “talent shortages and mismatches are impacting profitability now.”[1] Although more and more people are educated and mobile, many tasks can nowadays be fulfilled from anywhere in the world, in part thanks to technology. This might mean talent gaps in certain markets or certain industries where highly skilled employees are simply not available. The human being hence moves centre stage and becomes a major ingredient of a company’s success. As a result, the capacity to motivate and retain talent is in fact more important than ever.
But what can be understood when speaking about “human capital” and why, over the last decade and in some cultures, did the notion sometimes suffer from a negative interpretation?[2]Although many different ways exist to describe “human capital”, a common definition says that it is (…)the stock of competencies, knowledge, social and personality attributes, including creativity, embodied in the ability to perform labour so as to produce economic value“[3]. Obviously, through this definition and when reading pertinent literature[4] about the subject, one can easily understand the feeling of uneasiness that befalls us as there is always a slight thought or “after taste” comparing humans with machines and other production factors. Human capital becomes in a way substitutable which adds a certain insecurity to the discussion.
But, as we will all agree, human beings and individuals are more than a mere “factor of production” and one thing is for sure: (…)the loss in productivity and time when a valuable employee leaves, as well as the expense related to retraining (…)”[5] are huge and nowadays this is more and more noticed. As a consequence job-hopping becomes a fear of every employer. Moving forward, organizations are now making efforts to identify talented managers as early as possible, in order to devote time and resources for their ongoing development and motivation.
As a leader, you too can make a real difference as to a certain extent, you are able to create the conditions that allow qualified staff members to feel at ease at their workplace and identify with the corporate culture. By “leading through example” you can foster a climate of trust and transparency, allowing for growth and personal satisfaction. A “happy” employee will be less likely to accept other competitive job offers that he/she will most certainly receive during his/her career. Intrinsic motivation can be far more powerful than extrinsic motivation and the key lies in your hand, as a proactive and empathic leader!
[2] See German speaking literature like for example: http://www.harvardbusinessmanager.de/heft/artikel/a-622148.html
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_capital
[4] See for example articles from Gary Weber who carried out an extension of the applicability of economic theory in his analysis of relations among individuals outside of the market system.