Leading through developing others (Why do we need to develop others?)

In an organizational environment, one of the primary responsibility of a leader is to develop his team members to the next level of competency. The necessity can be looked at both a leader and a team member's perspective.

From a leader's growth perspective:

Assume that you are not developing your team to your competency level, then you are forced to do the routine things you are doing and you will not have time to develop yourself for new learnings. Your growth stagnates there

When you are not preparing the teammates as the successor for your job, while management considers you for elevation or different growth opportunities, they think twice about existing positions as there is no right successor. Management may want to keep you in the same position until they find an alternative. You are losing new opportunities.

From the team members perspective :

 In today’s scenario of learning and opportunities, real talent will find its way for their growth. If you are not taking care of your people development and growth, eventually your smart team member finds his own way to grow either in your existing organization or in the new organization.

Generally, people regard you as a leader only when you help them out to bring out their potential.

You will grow only by helping others to grow.

Hence, in all dimensions, as a leader of your team, you should develop your team.

However, there are some misconceptions and barriers to developing others and let us discuss next week.

Have a great week ahead!

Leading through developing others

Having discussed the three phases of leadership development viz, Leading self, Leading others, Leading through  Result, the final and 4^th phase of the leadership development process is “ Developing others.”

What is meant by developing others?  

In a professional setup, developing others means your intention to spend your time and energy to develop others in terms of professional competency enhancement.

The efforts could be on any or all of the following areas.

1.Imparting the knowledge or sharing your experience with your team or next generation
2.Facilitate for skill development or applying the knowledge by your teammate
3.Giving your feedback or coach others to inculcate the right behaviors for growth
4.Being available for mentoring or guiding others by offering your perspectives

Since as a leader, you have grown up in a career ladder through your competency, now it is your turn to lift others to your level of competency. That is the development of others.
 
As I have observed in most of the organization, people are inclined enough in developing themselves, delivering results as part of leadership development, but not giving equal importance on developing others except a few people who have a genuine interest on others. This scenario is not by intentional, but due to lack of awareness and misconceptions of development.

In some organizations, there are systems and processes of developing others as a necessary process, and there is a governance mechanism to ensure people are spending time on developing others. However, developing others must come within as part of giving to others, and it is a moral responsibility of everyone who has grown up on the professional ladder.

Let us discuss the following aspects  of developing others in the coming week

1. Why do we need to develop others?
2. Misconceptions in developing others
3. Methods of developing others
4. Insights on giving feedback
5. When is coaching required?
6. Need for being a mentor to others

 
Have a great week till then!

Leading through Result ( Focus on the process)

As discussed, one of the development steps in leadership development is delivering consistent results. The dilemma most of us have is whether to chase the result or the process. To get clarity, we need to understand the law of nature.

"For any effect/result, there must be a cause/process ;
When there is a change in process, accordingly there will be a change in result".

For example, if you want to make the best presentation to your client( Result), many factors contribute to the result. Your presentation content, your body language, your voice quality, the environment in which you present, your client’s interest and so on. When all the process is good, the result also will be good. You may not have control over the result, but you can influence or ensure the process in all factors as much as possible.

When you focus on the process and drive the process, the result may be in your favor
.
Highly effective leaders, always focus on minute things and ensure the factors are always in their favor and eventually they achieve the result they want.

You might have seen some people exist successfully many years in their chosen field like media, sports, business amidst all the competition and turbulence times. You can see a typical pattern in their thought process, that is, continuously develop themselves as a process. When they are changing themselves as a process, the result is also sustainable.

    To sum up, if you want a great result, your process also needs to be different and robust. You can not influence the result, but you can influence the process. More your process is consistent the result also will be consistent and higher level.

Leadership is all about delivering result through the process, not through ad-hoc, shortcut, one-time success !.

Leading through Result- (Managing Expectation)

One of the areas, a leader, need to sensitize is on understanding or managing the expectation clearly from others in a professional environment. When the expectation on the result is not clearly understood and clarified, it leads to disconnect and frustration on both giver and receiver.

In one of my client operations, the business head asked his accountant to help him with P&L analysis of the previous year. The accountant worked through the accountancy software and prepared P&L statement data. With a sigh of relief as he delivered the work on time, he explained the business head the hardship he had undergone to make the report. However, the business head was not happy with the output.

What the business head expected from his teammate was that statement with analysis on what needs to be done to improve the P&L as he thought that information was already available in the software system. His expectation was to get “sensitivity analysis”, whereas the accountant felt that taking summary from the system itself was a significant task and he delivered the result on time.

Here is the issue is lack of expectation management.

We may suggest that communication needs to be improved on both ends. In reality, there is an emerging trend in the professional transaction is to give more value added than stated expectation given the technology, information available in the professional environment. The transaction could be between peers, customer and supplier, employee and employer.

Discounting the fact of communication improvement, the question an individual must ask himself is whether he is making an effort to offer an extra bit of value addition. That will be the starting for leadership development towards making an impact on others!!
 

Leading through Result ( Developing your Thought leadership)

One of the ways to make an impact in your professional environment is by developing thought leadership.

What is meant by thought leadership?

Thought leadership is that you develop expertise in your core functional area or any subject and people in your network always seek your opinion or ideas or your perspectives when they face any problems in the technical domain or subject.
 
That is, Thought leader is one who is “sought after expert”  in a given field or functional domain.

For example,
If people in your network or your organization perceive you as an expert in creative problem solver for any business challenges, they will approach you when they face any business struggles. By making yourself as an expert in any given functional domain, you are making an impact on others, or you are delivering results as a leader in a professional environment.

You might have come across some people as an expert in Tooling, Design, Coaching, Negotiation, Investment, analyst, problem solver and so on. 

You can become an expert in your functional area with systematic effort.
 
How to develop thought leadership in your functional domain?

1. First, you need to identify your core area or your strength
2. Polish your knowledge and skill in your core area
3. Continuously add value to others in your core area, especially in a meeting forum or during the crisis in a professional environment
4. Over some time, people will identify and associate you with your expertise

Developing thought leadership will pay you in the long run, and the development effort is a continuous effort. You need to invest in you!!!

Leading through Result - Impacting others

Having discussed making an impact at self-level on leading, let us examine, how you can make an impact on others in a day to day life.

The others could be your friends, colleagues, boss, and subordinates in a professional setup. The first impact you can make others is that making yourself approachable when others are reaching out. Approachable means, how you are friendly enough and how you care them through listening. It should not be perceived that you need to be available for others all the time and do serve for other’s need. Even if you are not available to others, how politely you are refusing is also a way to make an impact on others positively.

Similarly, when others are approaching you for a solution to problems, how you are guiding with your thoughts or perspective or directing to right sources makes an impact on others.

The point is how you are conducting yourself through eventually make an impact on them about you. Once you make an impact on others through your positive gesture and thought process, any higher level challenges in the organizations can be resolved with your leadership capability.

To sum up, when you are going up the career ladder, you need to make an impact on others through your ease of approach and friendly. This is something experts refer to as soft skills. Once you impact on soft aspects, you can lead in any hard, technical, business challenges!
 

Leading through Result -Impacting Self

The first logical step in delivering a result or making an impact as one of the leadership development processes is to create an impact at self-level through our actions.

Making an impact at self-level:

To gain more influence on others or any decisions you take on a professional ground. First, you need to make an impact at your level.

For example, if you are suffering from some unwanted habits, you need to work on yourself to give up the practice. When you achieve through your willpower, you are making an impact at your level, and this impact will reinforce your leadership capability.

Similarly, if you are the person of coming late for any event, first correct yourself and make an impact on yourself. This impact at your level will bring you more confidence to you when you insist discipline on others.

If you afraid of taking a decision even with given data points, make yourself to break the inner fear and experiment to take a decision and face the consequence. By breaking your limitations, you are making an impact at self. 

Likewise, each one of us has many inhibitions, reservations, doubts, inferiority complex, procrastination and when you work on it and overcome those pulling factors, you are making an impact at yourself. Any positive impact being created by you at self-level will give you tremendous power to lead others.

Identify the limitations which are pulling you down, take action and see the result or make self impact!
 
Let us discuss the ways by which you can make an impact on others in a day to day life in next week!

Leading Through Result

Having discussed some insights on personal leadership and leading others, the next step in the leadership development process is “ delivering results.”

Not only in a professional environment, in any transactions, like in customer-seller, employer-employee, sports, politics, what is being watched out for is Impact or result being delivered consistently.

You could be a person with good value systems, self-organized and good at building an interpersonal relationship with others, yet if you lack delivering impact or result, your growth and leadership development stalled.

You might have observed some people with excellent qualification and attitude, but struggles to go up through career ladder due to lack of delivering expected results or impact in their given role.

When we say result or impact, it could be tangible or intangible. However, people are looking for consistent result or impact from you as a leader in a given role or context.

Some of the areas need to be discussed on making an impact as a leaders

1.Making an impact at self-level and others
2.Thought leadership 
3.Managing expectation on Impact or Result
 
Let us discuss those areas in next week.

Have a great week till then!

Leading others-Earning Respect

The fifth factor in strengthening the quality of relationship with others in a professional environment is “earning respect”.

As we come across many personalities in a professional life like customers, colleagues, friends, subordinates, and bosses and do the transaction with them, only with a few people, we have respect and admire them. The respect comes from any one or all of the factors

• The way they treat or respect others
• They way they approach the problems
• They way they teach or guide others
• Their technical/ functional / leadership capabilities and so on.

 
Because of the above factors, we have high respect for them, in turn, a good relationship is getting formed. When the quality relationship exists, we are easily influenced by them, and they easily get the things done through us. The foundation for all is they earned our respect through their consistent, positive behavior and actions.

Similarly, when you want to influence others and get the things done, you need to earn respect through your decisive, consistent action which positively impacts them.

Earning respect is a long term process and calls for consistent effort from your end. Once you gain respect from others, your capability to get the things done or leading others also enhances!

Leading Others -Improving Communications 2

In continuation of last week discussion about improving communication in the workplace, there is always challenge in dealing with others on two scenarios

1. When you express yourself  to others
2. When you are getting instruction from others

 
When you express yourself to others – you need to apply purposeful communication practices as we discussed last week.

When you receive information from others also, there is a chance for misinterpretation that leads to a problem. Communication experts are suggesting that when the person is giving instruction, he supposed to ask the recipient to repeat what he said and get confirmed. However, in my opinion, it is the choice of the giver, and we cannot expect or influence others. What is possible at your level is that you can rephrase the statement to the giver and get confirmed about your interpretation quality.

For example, when your colleague is asking for some details about the something, say sales data, you can check with him by rephrasing his statement like sales details of the x year and prompt when he wants, the format he wants and so on. Checking back by rephrasing and prompting may likely prevent communication problem at a later stage. Also, this practice will enhance your alertness and proactiveness in the workplace.

Even though ensuring effective communication is two-way responsibility, your extra effort to explain to others in detail and your proactiveness in confirming with others is always under your control, and it will likely improve your communications skill and in turn, your capability to lead others!