Side by Side Article Archives

 

•Side by Side Presidential Leadership

•The Importance of Knowledge and Experience

•When 30-Minute Discussions Between Leaders and Contributors
Created $5 million

•How Side by Side Leadership helps Five New Leaders

•Contrast of Side by Side Leadership® and Top-Down Leadership


 

Side by Side Presidential Leadership

In the wake of September 11, the leadership of U.S. President George W. Bush has been spotlighted and tested, and both American citizens and world leaders have found some reassurance. In my opinion, this is due at least in part to a practical demonstration of the effectiveness of Side by Side Leadership in an epochal social and military crisis.

Side by Side Leadership®, my model for how organizations can improve productivity by drawing out and harnessing the creativity, knowledge, and energy of followers, is based on hard research into the effects of two-way communication, participative decision making, and breakthrough teamwork in achieving shared visionary goals. Consistent use of Side by Side Leadership practices by organizational and team leaders have been shown to produce performance improvements of 25 percent or more.

Here are some of the ways President Bush has applied Side by Side Leadership:

Relying on team members. Before September 11, the president was often criticized for relying too heavily on Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and other appointees. On the day of Osama bin Laden's attack, the close-knit teamwork among these senior advisors paid off. For instance, the secretary of defense, who was present when his building was hit, immediately began mobilizing rescue and recovery efforts on his own authority. Appearing on network news from inside the Pentagon at 6:00 pm, he reassured Americans that the nation's defense establishment was on full alert and that its headquarters would be open for business by 8:00 the next morning.

Americans knew that even as he was being flown to secure locations until the full extent of the threat was known, the president stayed in contact with key government leaders, including New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani. When interviewed, each leader began by saying, "When I was talking with President Bush. . . ." This helped calm the fears of many Americans whose sense of security had been shattered by the day's events.

Listening to other points of view. One of Bush's political strengths is his ability to engage and work with people who disagree with him. Many Democrats supported him when he ran for president. When he was the Republican governor of Texas, Democratic state senators and representatives liked him, including the most powerful Democrat of all, Lieutenant Governor Bob Bullock. As governor, Bush personally conferred with Democrats and asked their opinion more than the previous governor, their own party's Ann Richards. Democrats in Washington, D.C., have been learning that President Bush's efforts to learn and understand differing points of view is genuine.

Sharing leadership. In industry, as in government, too many leaders seem intent on drawing all attention to themselves. But in the early days of the 9-11 crisis, the president freely yielded the spotlight to his own cabinet members, members of Congress, and leaders in national and local government. On the evening newscasts of September 11, Secretary of State Colin Powell and Attorney General John Ashcroft calmly stated what was known and what was being done to protect the public. House and Senate leaders of both parties stated that they had been fully informed of the crisis and publicly expressed bipartisan support for the president's actions. The mayor of New York stayed visible at Ground Zero to coordinate rescue efforts and reassure New Yorkers that the city still functioned. The visibility of authoritative knowledge and action at all levels reassured Americans of the nation's resiliency and its ability to deal with this unprecedented crisis. It demonstrated a unified team approach at a time when the nation and the world community badly needed reassurance.

Coordinating with other leaders. All organizational leaders must at times coordinate and cooperate with their counterparts in other organizations. Unless this is done using principles of Side by Side Leadership, cross-organizational leadership becomes a continual tug-of-war: which leader is the "dominant alpha" of the pack? The threats and opportunities of today's world do not allow such power games. Leaders who cannot work as coequals with other leaders are gradually frozen out of influence.

President Bush's Side by Side leadership came through strongly in the way he coordinated with other world leaders. He quickly established communication with America's strongest traditional allies, as well as with potential new allies near Afghanistan. Along with his secretaries of state and defense, the president immediately began a dialogue with leaders of other nations on formulating and carrying out an appropriate response to the attacks.

Communicating with the public. One area in which all government leaders could improve is in being more side by side with the public. Since September 11, American citizens eager to help victims of the attacks have donated hundreds of millions of dollars and more blood than the blood banks could handle. But national leaders have asked eager citizens to do little more than "shop till you drop." Our leaders need to provide more meaningful options for action that fits people's family and work goals, their professional and personal values. How can we protect ourselves against the possibility of more attacks? What can we do to restore security and confidence in our transportation and postal systems? By discussing a range of options and actions, leaders could help people feel less vulnerable, more individually powerful, and more confident. Osama's organization is being systematically dismantled by our military, but the psychological battle against terror at home is yet to be fully joined. Osama bin Laden's terrorists are, of course, directly responsible for the loss and suffering of September 11. On the other hand, every American city has long suffered the detrimental effects of prejudice, illiteracy, and poverty. The battle against terrorism and its causes must include a national campaign to diminish or eliminate these pervasive plagues. Side by Side Leadership can help us win that victory as well.

_____________________________
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



The Importance of Knowledge and Experience

Focused creativity is the fourth Principle of Side by Side Leadership. Creativity is critical to identify and meet the risks and opportunities that arise every day. But there is a danger of implementing a creative idea that does more harm than good. The Side by Side Leader nurtures knowledge leaders who share what they know so the best creative ideas are used and implemented. After creative ideas are generated, knowledge leaders step in. They look at their own ideas, and at the ideas of teams.

Mihaly Csikszentmihaly (pronounced "CHICK-sent-me-high-ee"), professor of psychology and education at the University of Chicago authored the best-selling book Creativity. In the book he studied creativity and 80 of the most creative individuals of the last half of the 20th century. He selected the inventor Jacob Rabinow as one of the most creative individuals of the 20th century. Rabinow holds 230 U.S. patents on a wide variety of mechanical and electrical devices. Among these are the automatic regulation of clocks and watches formerly used in all American automobiles, the automatic letter-sorting machine used by the U.S. Post Office, the magnetic particle clutch, the "best-match" principle in optical and magnetic character reading machines, many safety mechanisms for ordinance devices, and the straight-line phonograph. Rabinow described the brainstorming phases of creativity and idea selection in the following way.

You must think of a lot of music, a lot of ideas, a lot of poetry, a lot of whatever. And if you're good, you must be able to throw out the junk immediately without even saying it. In other words you get many ideas appearing and you discard them because you're well trained and you say, "that's junk"i p. 49.

Knowledge and experience help the leader and the team select the best ideas. Rabinow knew the importance of knowledge and experience when he forcefully amplified on how to select the best ideas, "And that doesn't mean everyone can vote on it; they don't know enough" (p. 50 Csikszentmihaly, 1996).ii

Teams are great at brainstorming a huge reservoir of innovative options, but individuals with knowledge can guide the team in selecting the best alternatives by sharing their knowledge.

The psychologist Edwin Locke has conducted more good hard data studies of goal setting than anyone else. He discovered that when leaders set specific, reach-out targets for simple work tasks, productivity dramatically increased. Complex work tasks like planning a new factory or designing a new product cannot be effectively performed by simply setting a specific reach-out goal and working hard (Wood and Locke, 1990).iii
Effective strategies and action steps based upon the best available knowledge are also required.

An automobile manufacturer built an automotive glass factory. After several years of losing money, they brought in an outside expert. The expert calculated the plant's highest ideal production capability. He then proved that even with the highest capacity ever, the plant would never show a profit, because the plant had been constructed too small from the very beginning. The plant had to be closed. The factory did not have the right plant capacity planning knowledge, and the consequences were devastating for all involved.

One creative group of computer chip manufacturing engineers and operators tried to increase quality and productivity in their area. No matter how hard they tried, they could not make a significant improvement. The new set of equipment their manager had authorized to be purchased always broke down, and the equipment manufacturer could not fix the equipment. When the manager had made the decision to purchase the equipment, he had bought the least expensive equipment. The manager did not foresee that the difference in price could have been paid off in the first month of operation with the more expensive, but better performing equipment. Both of these examples illustrate how knowledge and the use of knowledge can make all the difference in achieving breakthrough.

The Side by Side Leadership principle is to use knowledge and experience to pick the best new ideas to further develop and put into action. First, generate as many innovative ideas as possible. Then, and only then, filter those innovative ideas through the sieve of the best knowledge and experience available to promote improvements.

_____________________________

i Rabinow, Jacob, Creativity, p. 49
ii Cxikszentmihaly, 1996.
iii Wood and Locke, 1990.

When 30-Minute Discussions Between Leaders and Contributors Created $5 million


Perhaps you are like other leaders, who know that they should have individual performance improvement discussions with each person on your team, but do not know how to do it. In a set of hard data studies conducted by Graen and his colleagues, supervisors were trained in how to facilitate structured, one-on-one meetings with their contributors to improve performance. The supervisors who used the structured one-on-one meetings achieved 15% greater productivity than the control group and groups where the leaders unilaterally attempted to improve working conditions.

The leader was trained to conduct a 30-minute discussion with each contributor on how together they could improve performance. In one of the studies, the leader and the team members were from a data processing group. The leaders were taught the following structured one-on-one format that you might want to use yourself to improve productivity with individuals you work with:
1. The leaders asked the contributor to state any of their concerns, dislikes, and expectations about their job, the leader's job, and their current working relationships;
2. The leader listened and checked their understanding of what the contributor said by summarizing the contributor's key points;
3. The leaders suspended their own viewpoints and the top-down authority frame of reference and just listened;
4. Then the leader presented his or her own expectations and concerns about their own performance, the contributor's performance, and their current working relationships.
5. The leader and the contributor together identified and agreed to actions to improve performance.

Did you notice that the supervisor was taught to set aside their authority position and conduct the discussion as equals? When the supervisors and managers approached their subordinates person to person to improve their relationships and the working conditions performance improved 15%.

The above hard data studies proved how average managers and supervisors can improve as leaders. An important follow-up study was conducted with supervisors who were failing. These supervisors had poor relationships with their followers. They were taught the same steps as above to facilitate an interactive one on one discussion with the contributors with whom they were having relationship problems. In this study, productivity shot up greater than 15%. The organization improved results a documented $5 million when the leaders established a more equal relationship with their team members.

When Leaders Facilitated a Structured One-On-One Discussion, the Result: 15% Improvement in Performance

Isn't it amazing to find that a 30-minute meeting can improve performance 15%? There were four keys to the success of the discussion:
1. The interaction was two-way and mutual;
2. The leader's point of view, while coming after the contributor's talking was equally important;
3. The leader was once again taught and required to practice excellent interpersonal listening; and
4. The conversation was structured

One of the concerns that I've noted is that bottom-up leadership was actually no better than the prevalent top-down model in increasing productivity. The research I have shared with you begins to show us both a third alternative of leadership - two-way shared leadership. An interpersonal leadership approach that is mutual will promote 15% improved performance.

This third way of leading is different than top-down in that the leader asks for and listens to the ideas of the contributor. The third alternative is also different than bottom-up leadership as the leader has an equal level of participation with the contributor. The leader and contributor are both actively sharing and listening to each other equally on how to drastically improve performance, a leadership practice you and I could bet our careers on.

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i Graen, George, Novak, Michael A. and Sommerkamp, Patricia (1982). The Effects of Leader-Member Exchange and Job Design on Productivity and Satisfaction: Testing a Dual Attachment Model. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 30, 109-131.
ii Scandura, Terri A. and Graen, George B. (1984). Moderating Effects of Initial Leader-Member Exchange Status on the Effects of a Leadership Intervention. Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol. 69, No. 3, 428-436.



How Side by Side Leadership helps Five New Leaders

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

Contrast of Side by Side Leadership® and Top-Down Leadership

Side by Side
Top-Down
Skill 1: Achieving Personal Visionary Goals

 Striving for personal power and wealth.
Skill 2: Practicing Honesty and Fairness

 Succeeding at any cost and losing trust.
Skill 3: Maintaining Objectivity

 It's okay to lose one's temper.
Skill 4: Acquiring Knowledge

 Only using what you learned in the past.
Skill 5: Sharing Knowledge

 Hoarding knowledge.
Skill 6: Transforming Knowledge

 Not leveraging knowledge.
Skill 7: Two-Way Listening

 Leading by commanding and talking.
Skill 8: Mutual Contributing

 Always maintaining superior status.
Skill 9: Connecting Visionary Goals

 Promoting own goals.
Skill 10: Diverse Networking Only interacting with a few people who are similar to oneself.
Skill 11: Managing the Interface

 Thinking only about one's own department.
Skill 12: Setting Team Goals

 Focusing on own priorities.
Skill 13: Using Structured Team Skills

 Not providing team training.
Skill 14: Coordinating Team Roles

 Direction each person what work they must do.
Skill 15: Increasing Team Capacity

 Having people do the same work day after day.
Skill 16: Identifying Opportunities and Threats

 Only worrying about problems inside the organization.
Skill 17: Living Organizational Values

 Financial success is all that is important.
Skill 18: Setting Organizational Visionary Goals.

 No real vision and no organizational goals.
Skill 19: Creating New Strategies

 Continuing to use the same products and services.
Skill 20: Creating a Flexible Organization Believing that all innovations and decisions should come from the top.




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