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Leadership Skill: The Accidental Partner
By harveyrobbins | October 18, 2007
The economy has stalled. Smaller companies are either being gobbled up or cobbled down. Larger companies are undergoing the largest merger-fest in U.S. history in order to stay globally competitive. Business strategies have been painfully twisted and squeezed to bolster the bottom lines of too many companies with too few customers. The result of all this chaos is a shifting of resources. Hundreds of thousands of people are finding themselves in new roles with new responsibilities in new or reorganized organizations. Those who have managed to survive the draining of human resources often find little time to grieve for lost coworkers. For now there is as much (or more) work to get done with fewer people.
If you have found yourself a member of this next generation of leaders, you’re probably scrambling. Because you have the title, or seem to know what you’re doing, or you’ve been there 30 days longer than the next person, people are looking to you for leadership. Asking you questions. Asking you for directions. Whether by choice or circumstance, you’ve been given the ball, you’re a leader, and people are looking to you for the next play.
What do you do? You look for partnering opportunities. You don’t have the time or inclination to worry about learning all the theories on leadership. You may have had a few classes on leadership in the past but can’t remember much of what they talked about. Let’s face it, once that class binder hits the shelf, it might as well have been crazy glued in place. It looks impressive, but it’s not very useful. What you really need is a quick guide to help you through the next few months. Here are two partnering opportunities you can use to ease the pressure of your leadership position.
Get a Grip (Don’t Panic, Plan)
The anxiety you are experiencing as a new leader is normal and natural. The fear comes from not knowing what you don’t know. It is driven by a concept known as “closure.” This idea says that if there is something that you don’t know, you tend to fill in the blanks with negatives; worst case scenarios. Ghosts of past failures come back to haunt and taunt you into believing that you will most likely fail again. These thoughts tend to prevent you from moving forward, to protect with inaction. Not only are these fears irrational, but they will most likely lead you to self-destruct as a leader. The best advice is to plan your actions as a leader. Find someone you trust already in a leadership position and glom onto them. Ask them to be you mentor for a period of time; be someone you can turn to for advice and counsel. Choose more than one if you’re really shaky. Then you can begin by measuring what you’ve got to work with; both your capital (budget) and human resources. Chose a direction that you will be heading, prioritize your goals, divide up your roles, and move forward. When in doubt, check with your partner; your mentor. They will provide the business advice and morale building you will need.
Set the Direction (Vision, Mission, Values)
Once you have a handle on your capital and human resources you will need to set the direction for your group. You may hear the terms “vision, mission, values” bantered about frequently. You may even feel the need to get these quickly or lose the right to lead. Well, don’t be in such a rush. Yes, vision is important in that it sets the direction for the entire company; what it would like to be known for in the future. Many companies fail, however, when they don’t align the “little visions” of the separate departments with the vision of the bigger organization. Can you imagine what it’s like working in an organization where the separate visions of the different departments all go in different directions; some in alignment with the overall corporate vision, others askew because of some burning mission of a maniacal team leader. All bumping into each other in total chaos.
You can develop a little vision of your own (just for your department), but only after you have coordinated it with the little visions of the other departments with whom you interact. You can’t have your department’s vision stepping on the toes (or stealing resources) of another department with whom you must partner.
Like a vision, a department mission must also be created in coordination with your partners. A mission tells your department why it exists and how it plans on accomplishing the vision. If you don’t have a clear idea of how and with whom you and your team plan on partnering, you will be missing the boat.
Value statements tend to measure the correctness of your vision. It is a set of behavioral guidelines; expectations on how people plan to interact with each other while accomplishing the mission and vision. Most value statements include some recognition of the need to partner with others within the organization; both in terms of sharing information and coordination of activities. These become markers that can later be used for both personal evaluation/feedback and measurement of progress towards outcomes.
Topics: Leadership Skill |