31 Questions about Leadership by Dr. Ed Brenegar

Dear All,

Here’s an interesting article on Leadership by Dr Ed Brenegar (http://edbrenegar.typepad.com ed@edbrenegar.com). A must for all Leaders. I’m sure you’ll enjoy reading it as much as I did!

Do leave a comment on some of questions he posed to start a healthy discussion on this topic.

Thanks and Cheers!

31 Management questions

 

Managing the X and Y of your Organizational DNA*

Hello Everyone,

This post is inspired by a Jethro Tull number from their album with the same name – ” Too Old to Rock ‘n’ Roll: Too Young to Die! (1976).

Issues in managing Gen X and Gen Y (Generation X and Generation Y) seem to be getting a lot of attention these days. In fact, I have been often asked by organizations to design and develop L&D initiatives for their managers which build awareness and understanding of issues involved in managing across generations.

The term Generation X was first used in the novel Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture (1991) by Douglas Coupland. Simply put, Gen X are typically people who were born approximately between 1960 and 1976, and are now in the prime of their careers and from the organizational perspective, usually senior SMEs or Senior leaders in an organization.

The term Generation Y first appeared in an August 1993 Ad Age editorial to describe the attitudes of the teenage generation then aged 13–19. Gen Y are those who were born approximately between 1976 and 2000 and are, for all practical problems, still ‘freshers’ in an organization. With the boom in IT and ITES industry and its associated cost arbitrage focus, we find more and more Gen Y in today’s organizations.

Other than Gen X and Y, various other generations have been recognized including the ‘Baby Boomers’, Generation Z, Millennials, etc.

It’s evident therefore that the generalizations about the various generations is fundamentally age-based and that as a resultant of having been born during different times the incumbents of the various generations have been influenced by the prevalent culture, economic conditions, societal norms, educational system and the political environment. This has led to different wants, needs and desires amongst the different generations, which in turn, gets reflected in their attitudes and behavior at the workplace with serious implications on managerial and leadership styles.

Finding ways to bridge the gaps within this new multigenerational workforce requires a new set of behavioral skills and competencies from the managers. It’s important for managers who manage both Gen X (older) and Gen Y (younger) employees in their teams to understand that they need to use different ‘levers’ for each set. This is compounded by the fact that the generations are mixed at all levels. Often young graduates will be managing people older than them, and senior managers managing several teams of very young ‘freshers’. However, most often, teams are not homogeneous from the generation perspective and managers have to cope with differing expectations related to authority, bureaucracy, work life balance, learning and interpersonal issues like communication, conflict resolution, feedback, etc.

So how does an organization address the issue of managing generational differences at work? How does an organization create a unified culture when there are such fundamental generational differences amongst the employees? How does an organization standardize its processes to balance the differences that arise due to generational gaps? How do organizational leaders acquire the diverse skills and competencies required to effective engage employees across different generations? How do managers align the different expectations and aspirations of different generations towards a larger organization goal and purpose?

Your ability to transcend the generation issue will decide the continued success of your organization. The question is – are you geared up for that?

(* Organizational DNA is a metaphor for the underlying factors that together define an organization’s “personality “and help explain its performance. The distillation of years of experience studying how companies organize and execute, the Organizational DNA framework was developed by Booz & Company to give organizations an easy, accessible way to identify and remedy the roadblocks that impede results).

Why do some managers make organizational exits painful?

Hello Everyone,

In my opinion, most senior leaders and HR do not give cognizance to the fact that one of the most valuable opportunities to brand a strong employee value proposition is when an employee leaves the organization! The way in which an organization treats an employee who is leaving the organization is a definitive indicator of the organization’s intrinsic culture and character. Yet, we come across many employees for whom the ‘exit experience’ has been traumatic. Is it the manager’s personality or the organization culture which causes this pain? Read on ……..

Why do some managers make organizational exits painful?

I’d love to have your comments on this post.

Thanks and Cheers!

 

Is Favoritism ‘slow poisoning’ your organization?

A telephone call this afternoon from a close friend of mine triggered this post. He spoke to me, very distraught and disturbed about something that is impacting him very negatively at work each day. He was a victim of ‘favoritism’ at work and he was considering leaving the job.

Familiar, isn’t it? I’m sure that all of us at some point in our organizational life have encountered it. However, though favoritism is rampant at all levels of the organization, it’s managed to remain a ‘hush-hush’ topic among senior organizational leaders. Is it because they are themselves are guilty of it? However, regardless of how little formal attention it receives from the top management or HR, favoritism remains a ‘hot’ topic amongst employees (who are themselves not the favorites of any manager) and often surfaces during employee conversations at lunch, during coffee breaks and at office get-togethers.

Well, Favoritism is part of human nature and is part of our day-to-day life. We have preferences for almost everything –be it related to food, clothes, music, cars and people. We have our favorites from childhood – both within the family and outside as it’s only natural to ‘seek’ people with whom you share common interests and background and often build up an easy rapport and relationship with them.

However, the issue of ‘Favoritism’ at the workplace surfaces when a manager treats a particular employee preferentially based on his/ her age, caste, creed, color, sex, background, ethnicity, language, ideology, personal relationship, etc. [The Webster dictionary defines Favoritism as “ one that is treated or regarded with special favor or liking; especially : a person who is specially loved, trusted, or provided with favors by someone of high rank or authority”]. A manager is guilty of Favoritism when he treats a team member preferentially or better than others in the team and not necessarily for reasons related to loyalty, commitment, superior work performance or his/ her having higher potential than others. Thus, the preferential treatment is primarily due to ‘personal’ reasons than those based on their individual skills and competencies or organizational parameters. Favoritism in the workplace might result in this person being promoted faster than others unfairly, being paid more to do the same job as others, being given more ‘exposure’ to senior management/ clients by way of special assignments or meetings, by way of attending prestigious seminars/ conferences, getting undue incentives, etc. The end result is that they appear to be treated better than others in the team and for no valid or objective reasons.

Though I have not come across any formal study report of favoritism at work in the Indian context, a study by Jonathan Gardner of the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University amply demonstrates that favoritism is rampant in American organizations. His study is based on 303 online interviews among Senior Business Executives at companies in the United States with at least 1,000 employees. Based on these interviews, his report highlights the following startling facts:

• 92% say favoritism occurs in most large organizations;
• 84% say favoritism takes place in their organization;
• 75% have witnessed favoritism at their current organization;
• 23% say they have practiced favoritism at their organization;
• 9% admit to having used favoritism in their last promotion decision;

According to the respondents, the following define “favoritism” as it pertains to decisions in the workplace –

• “Providing employees with preferred work and-or projects, providing with preferred hours, allowing failures to slide when others are held to a higher standard”;
• “Making decisions that benefit an employee with respect to compensation or career-related opportunities that are based on subjective factors other than merit, such as friendship, family, or influence of an important third party”;
• “We definitely have favorites we include in corporate meetings and important decisions. We keep an eye out for compatible people for promotions.”
• “Promoting someone who is NOT qualified, but is friends with senior officials.”
• “Promoting a person with less leadership ability because of his-her sexual persuasion, religion, similarity to the boss and being popular for the wrong reasons.”

Thus, it’s no wonder that favoritism is counterproductive in organizations and breeds a culture of mistrust, resentment and conflict that impacts top talent retention, productivity and customer satisfaction negatively.

So is your organization tolerating favoritism? Are their policies and procedures (e.g. policy related to Whistleblowers) in place to counter favoritism at different levels of the organization? Are your senior managers open to discussing this topic transparently? What are the things that you would do as a manager to avoid favoritism, both real and perceived?  

It’s time that we acknowledge the issue of favoritism in organizations and prepare to tackle it objectively from the TOP down! Let’s audit the various organization processes where favoritism lurks – the hiring process, the promotion process, the increment process ….. etc. Let’s introduce 360º appraisals for managers, have a policy against hiring relatives and many more such checks and balances that discourage favoritism at the workplace.

It’s time to act NOW or like arsenic poisoning, your organization will be slowly poisoned to death and you’d be blissfully unaware of it!

I welcome your valuable comments on this issue.

Thanks & Cheers!

Are your employees passionate@work?

Hello Everyone,

Passion@work has been an important point of discussion in  most senior leadership meetings. In this post, I have attempted to bring out a few perspectives from the leadership and organization culture perspective.

Are your employees PASSIONATE@WORK?

I do hope you enjoy reading this post as much as I enjoyed composing it! Do leave your comments to start a healthy discussion on this topic.

Thank you and Cheers!

Can you Spot the “I” Managers in your organization

Hello Everyone,

Ideally, promotions in organizations should be based on technical and behavioral competence. However, in reality most promotions in organizations are usually based on technical competence. Ignoring behavioral competence results in senior managers displaying dysfunctional behaviors at the executive level which are detrimental to the organization. In this post, I invite you to spot the behaviorally incompetent managers in your organization who display a series of dysfunctional behaviors which start with an “I”.

Can you Spot the “I” Managers in your organization?

Happy weekend reading. Please post your comments to start a healthy discussion on this topic. I would love to have perspectives from different organizations.

Thank you and Cheers!

 

 

 

The Little Book On Leadership

Hello Everyone,

Here’s your handy guide to some basic Leadership principles and practices. Feel free to distribute it to all your team members and friends.

The Little Book Of Leadership

Thanks and Cheers!

The missing capabilities of the Leadership Team – Let the employees evaluate!

Hello Everyone,

As a leadership development consultant, I have often been asked to evaluate the leadership capabilities of senior management team members. In this post, I would like to discuss this from a different perspective – why not let the employees who submit themselves to be led, evaluate the capabilities of the leadership team based on certain criteria. An interesting perspective, which I’m sure you will all enjoy reading and commenting on!

The missing capabilities of the Leadership Team – Let the employees evaluate!

As usual, all your comments are welcome!

Thanks and Cheers!

Comments on – Is your organization making you obsolete?

Thanks for all your comments on LinkedIn.

The different perspectives put forth by all of you are interesting! Plain complacency, a false sense of confidence, the inability to extricate oneself from the daily humdrum of personal and professional duties, no feedback on our personal abilities and professional competencies and low change orientation prevents us from taking charge of our professional development outside of the organization. We invest on our grooming, our health, our hobbies, our holidays …. but not on our personal and professional development. What a pity!