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Before
Side by Side
New leaders are promoted, elected, or appointed every day. Consider the
first day of five people thrust into leadership positions in a variety
of organizations. Observe how easily Susan, Carl, Robert, Patty, and Jeffrey
fell into using the traditional top-down leadership model.
Susan's Meeting
At her first meeting after being promoted Susan presented a radical, new
proposal to senior management. At the senior management meeting, Susan,
a new human resource vice president, presented her proposal to improve
productivity. As she discussed her ideas, she noticed senior managers
signaling each other with raised eyebrows and other subtle and not-so-subtle
body-language movements. No one asked her any questions or commented on
her proposal. When the meeting broke up, no one talked to her or made
eye contact. Over time she noticed that she was not invited to any more
senior management meetings.
Carl's Goals
After being appointed to head a nonprofit agency, Carl came to his first
board of director's meeting with a list of goals that he wanted the group
to adopt. The board was composed of volunteers from the community. Carl's
board listened quietly to his 30-minute presentation of his list of goals
for the agency. When he asked for comments, no one spoke up. When he pressured
the group to talk, Bob, one of the more experienced board members, voiced
a minor disagreement with the third goal. Carl then became defensive and
emotionally attacked Bob because Bob questioned him. The group came to
Bob's defense and criticized Carl because he said he wanted to hear the
group's thinking. Carl abruptly adjourned the meeting and vowed to himself
to avoid sharing his goals with the board.
Robert's Memos
On his first day as head of a new marketing and sales group, Robert sent
out long memos to subordinates telling them tasks he wanted them to complete.
Nearly every one of the recipients passively ignored the memos and direction.
The subordinate with the most experience, a creative first-line supervisor,
quickly transferred to another department. Robert ultimately became discouraged
because no one responded to his leadership. He returned to working on
achieving his sales quota and spent the minimum time helping his salesmen
improve their sales results. The work unit floundered and produced mediocre
results.
Patty's Training
Patty, the new church school director, scheduled a voluntary Tuesday evening
training class. She showed up early at her church Tuesday night for the
meeting she scheduled and placed a detailed agenda and comprehensive budget
report on each team member's chair. She waited and waited. No one showed
up. After 45 minutes, she disgustedly threw the neat stacks of paper in
the garbage can. She told herself that this was the last time she would
volunteer to lead a church function.
Jeffrey's Rules
Jeffrey, a new stepfather, listed the rules he expected his three teenage
stepchildren to obey. When Jeffrey presented his list of rules to his
new stepchildren, two of them angrily stomped out of the room. The teenagers
screamed that they never wanted to see him again and they wished he had
never married their mother! Jeffrey slipped into a state of depressed
confusion. These examples of leadership failure are based on true stories
with only the names changed. Each of these five new leaders thought they
would succeed because they did what the old definition says leaders must
do - they tried to influence others to do what they thought was best.
Similar scenes occur in most organizations and families every day.
Top Down Leadership
Robert, Carl, Susan, Patty, and Jeffrey exemplify the thousands of leaders
who try to lead by influencing others. Leadership as defined by top-down,
one-way influence has the following implications:
- Leaders must push followers;
- Leadership is done to other people; and
- Followers are empty and passive people until a leader provides the influencing
and the thinking for them.
Hundreds of books have been published and thousands of seminars have been
held in vain attempts to address these leadership deficiencies. Popular
book titles include The Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun and Cigars,
Whiskey, and Winning: Leadership Lessons from General Ulysses S. Grant.
Unfortunately, this approach emphasizes the success of particular individuals
in certain circumstances for specific situations. A leader needs be more
flexible in today's fast-paced world.
Side by Side Leadership
Side by Side Leadership is a new leadership model that produces 30-300%
improvements in performance because it captures the hearts and minds of
everyone in the organization. The key principle of Side by Side Leadership
is that leadership promotes better thinking, greater creativity and in
turn higher productivity when it is two-way. Side by Side uses two way
communication, shared authority and teamwork.
The
Five New Leaders Revisited
Susan, Carl, Robert, Patty, and Jeffrey experienced failure using the
old definition of leadership as one-way influencing or leading. Susan,
Carl, Robert, Patty, and Jeffrey received training in how to lead side
by side to achieve shared goals. Here is how their first few days looked
as a side by side leader.
Susan Leads Organizational Transformation
Susan
was promoted to Vice President of Human Resources for a company that had
been hemorrhaging money for the past two years. She wanted to go into
her first executive staff meeting with the president and his staff with
a proposal for organizational transformation. The proposal would include
examining the company's values, relationships with customers, a new vision,
mission, visionary business goals, strategies, and a corresponding revamping
of the organizational culture and structure. Susan believed that such
a radical top-down transformation would transform the company from a gradual
decline to becoming a potentially elite, best-in-industry company.
The Side by Side Leadership training convinced Susan that, without several
behind-the-scene meetings, her proposal would be rejected. She decided
to attend her first executive staff meeting and quietly listen. The meeting
started late. She noticed that while everyone else was fairly complacent
about the negative financial results, the Vice President of Manufacturing,
Mike, was upset. After the meeting, Susan asked Mike to discuss his concerns
with her. Susan discovered that Mike felt exactly as she did. They both
knew that a whole set of major changes was needed. Susan showed Mike her
proposal for intensely evaluating and possibly modifying the company's
direction and corresponding business and organizational strategies. Mike
said there was no way the president and his team would approve such a
plan at this time. The other leaders were in denial; they clung to the
fantasy that business would improve on its own. Susan asked if Mike would
consider moving forward and piloting the organizational transformation
plan in his manufacturing division. After thoughtfully considering the
idea, Mike agreed.
Susan and Mike went to the president of the company and first tried to
sell him on implementing the business and organizational transformation
plan for the whole company. He vehemently rejected that proposal. The
president did, however, approve Mike trying the change process in his
organization. By using an external consulting company to speed up the
transformation, Mike's division quickly began reporting dramatic improvements
in business results after only four months. The president asked Susan
and Mike to meet with him privately to talk about the changes. Susan and
Mike were ecstatic because, as they described it, the sources of the improvements
were the ideas of people at all levels of Mike's organization including
the factory workers themselves. The ideas emerged systematically out of
the structured organizational transformation process. The president asked
Susan and Mike to meet individually with each of the other vice presidents
before the next staff meeting to share the results of their work. The
president implemented the structured organizational development process
in spite of a couple of reluctant vice presidents. In two years, the company
became one of the top three in its industry with continual record profits.
Carl Invigorates a Non-Profit Organization
Carl was hired to invigorate new life into a nonprofit organization that
had existed for seventy years. His board of directors consisted of 30
volunteers who had never worked together as a team, nor had they received
team skills training. He knew that the group, while well meaning, often
worked at cross purposes. Carl was tempted to call a meeting and present
several of his goals for the organization to implement.
Instead, Carl first met with the professional staff. Together, they divided
the board into three more manageable work groups of 10 people each. Each
group of ten board members participated in eight hours of Side by Side
Leadership training, which included setting individual team goals. On
their own, each of the three teams set specific goals, which Carl then
coordinated through his professional staff. The nonprofit organization
was rejuvenated by the active participation by its board of directors.
Robert Leads a Sales Team to Success
Robert was promoted to head the sales and marketing department he had
worked in for the past five years. He had helped set the current sales
goals with the other sales team members and the previous department manager.
The team consistently failed to achieve its sales goals, and Robert's
predecessor had left for that reason. Robert's first idea was to send
out a memo to each team member listing the biggest new customers that
the sales team should go after and what tactics to use to win the customers'
business.
With his new concept of Side by Side Leadership, Robert decided to meet
first with one of the most experienced members of his team. Robert asked
Mary what she thought the problems were with the sales performance. She
speculated that the high number of new sales team members and their lack
of training and experience were at the heart of the problem. Robert asked
her if she would help him develop six to eight hours of targeted training
for new sales team members. She enthusiastically agreed. Mary suggested
that they compile a list of the key skills and meet individually with
each member to assess mutually each person's deficient areas. Together
they completed first the assessment and then the training. Within three
months, the sales performance of the group was up 20%.
Patty Uses Side by Side Leadership In a Church
Patty, the new church school director, was full of ideas to make her church
school program effective. There were 12 teachers who provided classes
for 40 children and 30 adults every Sunday morning at 10:00 am. Everyone
was a volunteer including herself. Many of the teachers not only had young
families, but they also worked. They were busy people. Prior to scheduling
her first meeting, Patty talked on the telephone with three of the senior
teachers about their suggestions for how to improve the church school
program. Each teacher had two or three good ideas. Patty asked them when
would be the best time to meet together with all of the teachers.
From those conversations, Patty developed three schedule options: 9:00
a.m. Sunday before church school; 12:00 Sunday after the worship service
(bring a sack lunch); or Tuesday evening at 7:00 p.m. The best time was
the Sunday sack lunch at 12:00. Only nine teachers attended the scheduled
meeting, but all together they identified 15 improvement ideas. Five of
the ideas were implemented immediately. Many of the ideas centered on
increasing the attendance of children and youth. Patty and the teachers
set a goal to increase attendance by 20% in six months. That meant eight
new children or youths had to attend. Towards the end of the meeting,
Patty asked the teachers how interested they were in attending a two-hour
class on new methods of teaching that increased student participation
and learning. Surprisingly enough, everyone wanted to sign up.
Jeffery Tries Side by Side Leadership as a New
Parent
The Side by Side Leadership Model was also helpful in one of life's greatest
challenges, that of being a parent. Instead of laying down the house rules
in the first meeting with his new stepchildren, Jeffrey individually met
with each teenager to plan a mutually agreeable fun outing. Matthew, the
oldest son, asked Jeffrey to go to an automobile show that would be in
town the following weekend. Kimberly, who was into music, suggested they
go to a music store and listen to samples of new albums and songs. Wendy,
the 13-year old, wanted Jeffrey to come watch her next soccer game.
Jeffrey accompanied each child in the agreed upon activity. In the car
and walking around, he asked each teenager what other interests and hobbies
they had. He carefully listened. He discovered that two of his stepchildren
enjoyed his interests in hiking and being outdoors. The third child described
how he wanted to learn to snow ski, which Jeffrey also enjoyed doing.
Jeffrey discussed with them how he would like to have a family meeting
to plan out the fun activities for the next couple of months. He also
suggested they should talk about what makes a good family and how members
of a family should treat each other for it to be a happy family. Jeffrey
and his new wife, Stephanie, planned the meeting together.
The meeting was held on a Sunday afternoon. The family listed the possible
fun activities and agreed on and scheduled four outings that they would
do in the next two months. Each person then wrote down three ways that
people in a good family treat each other. The teenagers listed some behaviors
they wanted from each other and their parents. Primary on the list was
a respect for their ideas and their property. Jeffrey used the idea of
respect to move into his main concern: the teenagers not letting their
parents know where they were going. Everyone agreed to follow the five
"House Rules," which included always letting the family know where they
are.
Leadership is facilitating side by side relationships toward shared
goals. It is mutual as opposed to one-way. This model works for business,
nonprofit organizations, government, and all other organizations. It even
works with families.
_____________________________
Dennis
Romig, Ph.D. Author of the New York Times Best Selling Book, Side by
Side Leadership: Achieving Outstanding Results Together. President
of Performance Resources, Inc., Austin, Texas
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