I just read October 2016's Harvard Business Review article "Why Leadership Training Fails--and What to Do About It" by Michael Beer, Magnus Finnstrom and Derek Schrader.
This article peaked my interest because I have often been asked in my career, to facilitate meetings that help organizations move forward with a project. The individuals requesting my assistance have taken many leadership courses throughout their careers, but cannot lead their teams to communicate and accomplish their goals. The problem is not their leadership training, but a lack of an organizational infrastructure that enables them to communicate openly and effectively as a team with the freedom to implement change in their organizations as the team identifies.
When I consult with teams to help them be more productive in their teamwork, I commonly have to start the meeting with a frank discussion--allowing all members to speak openly and honestly about the project, then once everyone is aligned with a strategy, I lead their conversation on how they want to accomplish defined goals, producing written and actionable tasks, which may change in future meetings--based on what they discover by working together. Why don't senior leaders create this culture in their organizations? Change is hard to implement, especially when it is an organizational culture to do it the way that it has always been done.
The HBR article stated that the solution to this problem is to first create an organizational system where new behaviors, not old behaviors, are the norm, thereby enabling learning that improves organizational effectiveness and performance. Once this is accomplished, then train individuals to lead and work effectively as a team. Leading in a faulty system is a recipe for stagnation and potential failure. I have seen numerous organizations, for-profit and non-profit, diminish significantly because of unchanging negative culture.
Contact me for a discussion if this affects your organization, I'd like to help your team work well together by changing your organizational culture to be positive and productive.
I just taught a National Fire Academy class on "Exercising Leadership Ethically" to fire department leaders at the Georgia Public Safety Training Center in Forsyth, Georgia. It is interesting that different people can have contrasting views on what is ethical. Most of the class time was focused on how to form an ethical decision and the last part of the class was about how to defend your ethical decision when there is more than one right option.
As leaders, we want to be given the chance to lead by our own values, which might require the open-mindedness of others who see a different way, one that they perceive is better or more ethical. Do we allow our leaders to lead as their ethics guide them, even if we disagree?
An ethical dilemma involves Right vs. Right decisions, usually not easy ones. Constructive Dialogue helps leaders and those being lead to understand one another, to define ethical dilemmas and make ethical decisions that will produce a desired outcome. There is always more than one way to reach an outcome. HOW you decide and communicate your leadership decision is key to your ethical leadership success, not WHAT you decide.
Contact us for ethical leadership consulting.
Last week I audited a class that I am going to teach for the American Management Association, called "Customer Service Excellence: How to Win and Keep Customers." This class focused on developing positive and proactive communication skills, working with your own and others' personality styles, and assessing auditory-visual-kinesthetic processing in customer relations.
What struck me as most impressive, although the whole class was very good, is understanding that you have internal and external customers, who both deserve customer-level treatment. I did not expect internal customer discussion in this class, based on the title, but I think that it provides an essential understanding of how to succeed in any organization, whether it is for-profit, non-profit, public service, etc. Your internal customers, or co-workers, can make or break your success personally and in the delivery of products or services to your external customers.
I have worked in organizations that talked about being a team, but individually had no interest in working as one, with leaders who did not value building their teams for success. I didn't stay long in those organizations, as they were dysfunctional and, subsequently, on a downward spiral. Internal customer service is vital to an organization's success -- the better it works, the better the organization performs.
If your organization's employees are not serving their internal customers and productivity is less than desired, I can conduct this training class at your organization's location(s), to train all employees how to work effectively with one another in a positive and proactive manner. It not only improves employee morale, but can really help the organization's performance.