By Ron Jones
HR Management & Workplace Relations Consultant
I have often wondered how we should prepare those we expect to take on leadership roles in our organisations.
There are many leadership programs in place and a considerable amount of money is spent developing and implementing the right program for the organisation concerned.
It often seems that the only people who get access to such programs are those already in positions of senior management or those on some ‘fast-track’ program for high achievers. Of course, many of these individuals will have been chosen because of their inherent capacity to already meet some of the challenges of their positions. The expectation therefore is that they will rise to the occasion when the organisation needs them to take on a change management exercise, or manage a restructure, or some other significant event.
We also expect that our managers can develop much of their leadership capability through a particular program: that somehow they might acquire the competencies necessary for leading by example, modelling the way or something similar.
My personal view, from reading much of the literature on leadership and from hearing of the personal experiences of those we admire as leaders, is that leadership characteristics are typically highlighted through the behaviour which is exhibited when those persons are forced to act outside of their comfort zone. I cannot think of anyone who I would describe or characterise as a leader because of their behaviour in doing what is normally within their day-to-day sphere of comfort. If you think about the circumstances in which we describe the role of those who have ‘stepped up’, it is always set in a context of the unknown.
Our traditional method of selecting people for senior roles where leadership is required is to choose those who have performed well in what they already do. It is little wonder that many of them fail to deliver the inspirational leadership required of them.
This suggests to me that HR practitioners within organisations have to look for alternative ways of identifying the leadership potential within their organisations.
One area to explore is the development of various experiences which are specifically designed to take managers out of their comfort zone and provide challenges directly linked to key leadership competencies.
For example, a structured program of work providing volunteer assistance within a disability service organisation or assisting the long term unemployed might be specific ways in which potential leaders can be confronted through being taken out of their comfort zone. Being responsible for delivering a particular project within such an agency will provide challenges that directly relate to many of the competencies in any leadership profile and allow for a more effective means of assessing future leadership potential.
HR practitioners need to think outside their own comfort zone to provide more effective leadership solutions for their organisations.
This article was written for Human Resources iQ.
Showing posts with label leadership. Show all posts
Showing posts with label leadership. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Friday, April 8, 2011
Just a Million Strokes: Leadership vs Management
Written by Ron Jones for HRiQ
I had spent some time in recent weeks trying to really come to terms with the difference between leadership and management. I know that there are plenty of theoretical and research-based differences about roles, personality types and a range of other key components. What I was looking for was what we as HR practitioners could do to tangibly promote leadership.
And then I attended a presentation by Roz Savage.
For those of you who don’t know, Roz was the first woman to row solo across the Pacific Ocean, having already conquered the Atlantic. In the next few days after her talk, she would set out to conquer the Indian Ocean.
During her presentation, she commented that the first leg of the Pacific was ”just a million strokes." I don’t pretend to know anything about what it is like to embark on such a journey, but it gave me a jolt to think that most of us are overawed by such large numbers and the challenge that this presents.
There was also another realization that struck me: most of us are really good at giving up on something when we don’t like it and then moving onto something else.
But if you’re in the middle of the Pacific, and you’ve only done 350,000 strokes, you can’t give up! Where else would you go? Savage’s journey meant making a huge commitment—and having made the commitment, being prepared to see it through to the end.
Most of us in the workplace get stuck at some point. We give up on the task we are doing and move to something else; we go home and complain about the boss, the work, or something else— although we don’t often complain about ourselves!
A million is a huge number of strokes! Imagine the prospect of waking up each day and repeating the same action 10,000 times before you go to sleep again, only to wake up and do the same thing over, and over, and over.
Savage spoke about what inspired her to make the first solo journey. It was very much a personal exploration – something which took her completely out of the comfort zone of everything that she had done and what she was doing at the time.
It occurred to me that one difference between leadership and management is that management occurs within our comfort zone; true leadership takes us outside of that zone.
Think about the people who most inspire us as leaders. They inspire us because they take that extra step, do something which is counter-intuitive or really put their own interests on the line.
Most of us in HR roles like to play it safe. We rarely step outside of our own comfort zones, and many of us just strive to effectively maintain the status quo in our organizations. We are hardly ever presented with a mandate to take ourselves outside of our defined role, and yet this is precisely what we need to do. We need to challenge many of the assumptions within the organizations we work in. We should constantly be looking for the organizational challenges which not only build our own leadership capacity, but which also provide opportunities for others.
How many of us set out to do our ‘million stroke journey’: to challenge ourselves so completely that we forget what our comfort zone is?
I don’t know what my threshold is. I do know that every now and again, the challenges in the workplace can create ideal experiences to learn more about myself – and if I know that, then perhaps I can use Roz Savage’s example to be more effective as a leader to others.
I had spent some time in recent weeks trying to really come to terms with the difference between leadership and management. I know that there are plenty of theoretical and research-based differences about roles, personality types and a range of other key components. What I was looking for was what we as HR practitioners could do to tangibly promote leadership.
And then I attended a presentation by Roz Savage.
For those of you who don’t know, Roz was the first woman to row solo across the Pacific Ocean, having already conquered the Atlantic. In the next few days after her talk, she would set out to conquer the Indian Ocean.
During her presentation, she commented that the first leg of the Pacific was ”just a million strokes." I don’t pretend to know anything about what it is like to embark on such a journey, but it gave me a jolt to think that most of us are overawed by such large numbers and the challenge that this presents.
There was also another realization that struck me: most of us are really good at giving up on something when we don’t like it and then moving onto something else.
But if you’re in the middle of the Pacific, and you’ve only done 350,000 strokes, you can’t give up! Where else would you go? Savage’s journey meant making a huge commitment—and having made the commitment, being prepared to see it through to the end.
Most of us in the workplace get stuck at some point. We give up on the task we are doing and move to something else; we go home and complain about the boss, the work, or something else— although we don’t often complain about ourselves!
A million is a huge number of strokes! Imagine the prospect of waking up each day and repeating the same action 10,000 times before you go to sleep again, only to wake up and do the same thing over, and over, and over.
Savage spoke about what inspired her to make the first solo journey. It was very much a personal exploration – something which took her completely out of the comfort zone of everything that she had done and what she was doing at the time.
It occurred to me that one difference between leadership and management is that management occurs within our comfort zone; true leadership takes us outside of that zone.
Think about the people who most inspire us as leaders. They inspire us because they take that extra step, do something which is counter-intuitive or really put their own interests on the line.
Most of us in HR roles like to play it safe. We rarely step outside of our own comfort zones, and many of us just strive to effectively maintain the status quo in our organizations. We are hardly ever presented with a mandate to take ourselves outside of our defined role, and yet this is precisely what we need to do. We need to challenge many of the assumptions within the organizations we work in. We should constantly be looking for the organizational challenges which not only build our own leadership capacity, but which also provide opportunities for others.
How many of us set out to do our ‘million stroke journey’: to challenge ourselves so completely that we forget what our comfort zone is?
I don’t know what my threshold is. I do know that every now and again, the challenges in the workplace can create ideal experiences to learn more about myself – and if I know that, then perhaps I can use Roz Savage’s example to be more effective as a leader to others.
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