Accepting feedback overtakes traditional command-and-control style
Are values important for leadership? If so, can they be taught or improved? Such questions often arise in discussions of leaders’ effectiveness and training needs.
People hold dozens of values in many areas of life. Some are idealized as universals, such as honesty, and encouraged in everyone. However, values don’t exist in a vacuum and competing needs and desires can affect the priority an individual places on them.
An HR manager may believe he values honesty so highly he would report violations or quit if his boss steps over the line. Yet when confronted with such a situation, he may settle for indirect hints. The manager’s desire for remaining employed, his loyalty to his boss or the company, or other emotional factors may help rationalize a minor inconsistency with his values.
While behaviour indicates values, it is safe to say no one is perfectly consistent all the time. Having “character” describes those who do their best to stick consistently to their announced values through adversity. But values remain complex and dynamic. They interact with each other differently in different situations and change over time.
Imagine the differences in values most people held about smoking or the environment 30 years ago compared to today. Values evolve and people can learn new values, though this happens more often through experience than academic teaching.
Perhaps surprisingly, value priorities can change in an instant. In fact they often do. Smokers notoriously value smoking until the moment they come to truly believe it is disastrous for their health. From that point on, the challenge is dealing with habits and some addictive reactions, but the priority of putting health first is fixed and drives change.
It may take years of thought, hearing facts and figures, watching what happens to others, professional advice and more to reach that instant, but a sudden conversion of values, often referred to as reprioritizing or reframing, causes the new priority to outweigh the old one.
The new leadership values
At one time, command-and-control style leadership was held up as the primary industrial model. Its main values are immediate obedience and blind loyalty to doing what is ordered. Early assembly lines were not thought to run well if every worker made decisions along the way. Then Toyota proved workers should stop the line if something is wrong and constantly suggest new ways of improving things.
Values of innovation and trial and error are growing in importance in many workplaces, within guidelines or limits. These values must be balanced with the potentially conflicting values of efficiency and delivery of the product or service on time.
One paradox many are quick to point out is the primary way to learn how to do things right is to make mistakes. Yet many bosses remain painfully fearful of any employee making a mistake.
The question of how to reconcile such opposing values is very central, yet often glossed over. Finding a fair and reasonable balance is becoming the highest value. The paradox above, for instance, resolves easily when bosses realize they win extra points with their own superiors when they stand up and take blame. Being able to say, “My mistake. Next time I’ll provide more guidance, but this is what we learned,” is often the measure of a great manager helping people grow.
When subordinates’ risks pay off, the manager inevitably gains even more reflected glory for developing people, which is far more valuable than avoiding the risk or, as some managers foolishly do, stealing the credit. The truth is almost always known and the manager looks good or bad as a result of the total picture, not minor errors by reports.
There is still the need for the traditional values of effective command-and-control: honesty, integrity, character, persistence, fairness, decisiveness, optimism, intelligence and action. But another has been added: willingness to listen and tolerate mistakes made in good faith as part of the learning process — so-called “emotional intelligence” skills of relationship building and developing people. With that addition, the challenge of balancing competing requirements is far greater — judgment is needed and is tested daily.
There is at last clear recognition that no one person, no single white knight chief executive officer or manager, can provide all the answers. More than 60 studies all confirm a handful of core value practices are becoming recognized as the driving force behind results, according to Jeffrey Pfeffer, an organizational behaviour professor at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif.
These include:
• high levels of two-way communication;
• openness;
• high involvement at all levels;
• training; and
• people-oriented HR practices such as a range of fairly distributed rewards (not just pay) for good performance.
Can values be taught?
Courses can help leaders learn these values, but senior executives ranked classroom training at number 11 on a list of developmental experiences that helped them, according to a 2001 study by the Corporate Leadership Council, a member-based research and development association in Arlington, Va. At the top came taking on jobs with real responsibility, individual development plans, peer feedback, executive coaches, mentors and a varied series of smaller challenging roles.
Many managers are now more purposefully rotated among functions and geographic locations to expose them to different experiences that will help them learn to make better value decisions on their own. It takes at least two years in one assignment for managers to be able to learn from the results of their decisions, according to senior HR panelists at a recent event hosted by HR consulting firm Verity International in Toronto.
Preparing senior executives with the right experience and values takes more long-term planning than simply trying to hire outside candidates who seem to possess the right values. But the extra work pays off because the right values are often specific to each organization’s culture. Those promoted from inside, if effectively developed, have a definite advantage, as proven by repeated statistics showing far higher failure rates for executives, including CEOs, who are hired from outside.
Dave Crisp now speaks, writes, coaches and consults on leadership and human resources after leadership roles in seven challenging industries, including 14 years heading HR for Hudson’s Bay’s 70,000 people, helping it become a repeat “best company to work for.” For more information, visit www.balance-and-results.com.
People hold dozens of values in many areas of life. Some are idealized as universals, such as honesty, and encouraged in everyone. However, values don’t exist in a vacuum and competing needs and desires can affect the priority an individual places on them.
An HR manager may believe he values honesty so highly he would report violations or quit if his boss steps over the line. Yet when confronted with such a situation, he may settle for indirect hints. The manager’s desire for remaining employed, his loyalty to his boss or the company, or other emotional factors may help rationalize a minor inconsistency with his values.
While behaviour indicates values, it is safe to say no one is perfectly consistent all the time. Having “character” describes those who do their best to stick consistently to their announced values through adversity. But values remain complex and dynamic. They interact with each other differently in different situations and change over time.
Imagine the differences in values most people held about smoking or the environment 30 years ago compared to today. Values evolve and people can learn new values, though this happens more often through experience than academic teaching.
Perhaps surprisingly, value priorities can change in an instant. In fact they often do. Smokers notoriously value smoking until the moment they come to truly believe it is disastrous for their health. From that point on, the challenge is dealing with habits and some addictive reactions, but the priority of putting health first is fixed and drives change.
It may take years of thought, hearing facts and figures, watching what happens to others, professional advice and more to reach that instant, but a sudden conversion of values, often referred to as reprioritizing or reframing, causes the new priority to outweigh the old one.
The new leadership values
At one time, command-and-control style leadership was held up as the primary industrial model. Its main values are immediate obedience and blind loyalty to doing what is ordered. Early assembly lines were not thought to run well if every worker made decisions along the way. Then Toyota proved workers should stop the line if something is wrong and constantly suggest new ways of improving things.
Values of innovation and trial and error are growing in importance in many workplaces, within guidelines or limits. These values must be balanced with the potentially conflicting values of efficiency and delivery of the product or service on time.
One paradox many are quick to point out is the primary way to learn how to do things right is to make mistakes. Yet many bosses remain painfully fearful of any employee making a mistake.
The question of how to reconcile such opposing values is very central, yet often glossed over. Finding a fair and reasonable balance is becoming the highest value. The paradox above, for instance, resolves easily when bosses realize they win extra points with their own superiors when they stand up and take blame. Being able to say, “My mistake. Next time I’ll provide more guidance, but this is what we learned,” is often the measure of a great manager helping people grow.
When subordinates’ risks pay off, the manager inevitably gains even more reflected glory for developing people, which is far more valuable than avoiding the risk or, as some managers foolishly do, stealing the credit. The truth is almost always known and the manager looks good or bad as a result of the total picture, not minor errors by reports.
There is still the need for the traditional values of effective command-and-control: honesty, integrity, character, persistence, fairness, decisiveness, optimism, intelligence and action. But another has been added: willingness to listen and tolerate mistakes made in good faith as part of the learning process — so-called “emotional intelligence” skills of relationship building and developing people. With that addition, the challenge of balancing competing requirements is far greater — judgment is needed and is tested daily.
There is at last clear recognition that no one person, no single white knight chief executive officer or manager, can provide all the answers. More than 60 studies all confirm a handful of core value practices are becoming recognized as the driving force behind results, according to Jeffrey Pfeffer, an organizational behaviour professor at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif.
These include:
• high levels of two-way communication;
• openness;
• high involvement at all levels;
• training; and
• people-oriented HR practices such as a range of fairly distributed rewards (not just pay) for good performance.
Can values be taught?
Courses can help leaders learn these values, but senior executives ranked classroom training at number 11 on a list of developmental experiences that helped them, according to a 2001 study by the Corporate Leadership Council, a member-based research and development association in Arlington, Va. At the top came taking on jobs with real responsibility, individual development plans, peer feedback, executive coaches, mentors and a varied series of smaller challenging roles.
Many managers are now more purposefully rotated among functions and geographic locations to expose them to different experiences that will help them learn to make better value decisions on their own. It takes at least two years in one assignment for managers to be able to learn from the results of their decisions, according to senior HR panelists at a recent event hosted by HR consulting firm Verity International in Toronto.
Preparing senior executives with the right experience and values takes more long-term planning than simply trying to hire outside candidates who seem to possess the right values. But the extra work pays off because the right values are often specific to each organization’s culture. Those promoted from inside, if effectively developed, have a definite advantage, as proven by repeated statistics showing far higher failure rates for executives, including CEOs, who are hired from outside.
Dave Crisp now speaks, writes, coaches and consults on leadership and human resources after leadership roles in seven challenging industries, including 14 years heading HR for Hudson’s Bay’s 70,000 people, helping it become a repeat “best company to work for.” For more information, visit www.balance-and-results.com.
