When we perceive the simple center in the seemingly complex, we can change our world in powerful new ways.
Albert Einstein perceived the simple E=MC2 in the complexities of physical reality and changed the history of the 20th century.
Big Daddy Lipscomb, the Baltimore Colts 300 pound all-pro tackle in the 1960s perceived the simple center of what was perceived to be the complex game of football. "I just wade into players," he said, "until I come to the one with the ball. Him I keep!" - and changed the way the game was played.
Likewise, human resources, despite its complex activities, should have a fundamentally simple mission, yet it is a mission that is being neglected by many HR professionals. I call that mission the Leadership Imperative - helping the organization recruit, retain, and develop good leaders.
Clearly, without good leaders, few organizations can thrive over the long run. What characterizes a good leader? A good leader consistently gets results - in ethical and motivational ways. Because they interact with all business functions and usually provide education and training for those functions, human resource professionals should be focused primarily on recruiting, retaining, and developing leaders that get results. Any other focus is a footnote.
Yet working with human resource leaders in a variety of companies for the past two decades, I find that many of them are stumbling. Caught up in the tempests of downsizing, compliance demands, acquisitions, mergers, and reorganizations, they are engaged in activities that have little to do with their central mission. Ignoring or at least giving short shrift to the Leadership Imperative, they are too often viewed, especially by line leaders, as carrying out sideline endeavors.
Many HR leaders have nobody to blame for this situation but themselves. By neglecting the Imperative, they themselves have chosen to be sideline participants.
Here is a three-step action plan to get the HR function off the sidelines and into the thick of the game.
Recognize. Link. Execute.
Before I elaborate each step, let me define leadership as it ought to be. For your misunderstanding leadership will thwart you in applying the Imperative.
The word "leadership" comes from old Norse word-root meaning "to make go." Indeed, leadership is about making things go - making people go, making organizations go. But the misunderstanding comes in when leaders fail to understand who actually makes what go. Leaders often believe that they themselves must make things go, that if people must go from point A to point B, let's say, that they must order them to go. But order leadership founders today in fast-changing, highly competitive markets.
In this environment, a new kind of leadership must be cultivated - leadership that aims not to order others to go from point A to point B - but instead that aims to motivate them to want take the leadership in going from A to B.
That "getting others to lead others" is what leadership today should be about. And it is what we should inculcate in our clients. We must challenge them to lead, lead for results with this principle in mind, and accept nothing else from them but this leadership.
Furthermore, leadership today must be universal. To compete successfully in highly competitive, fast changing markets, organizations must be made up of employees who are all leaders in some way. All of us have leadership challenges thrust upon us many times daily. In the very moment that we are trying to persuade somebody to take action, we are a leader - even if that person we are trying to persuade is our boss. Persuasion is leadership. Furthermore, the most effective way to succeed in any endeavor is to take a leadership position in that endeavor.
The Imperative applies to all employees. Whatever activities you are being challenged to carry out, make the Imperative a lens through which you view those activities. Have your clients recognize that your work on the behalf of their leadership will pay large dividends toward advancing their careers.
Recognize: Recognize that recruiting, retaining, and developing good leaders ranks with earnings growth (or with nonprofit organizations: mission) in terms of being an organizational necessity. So most of your activities must be in some way tied to the Imperative.
For instance: HR executive directors who want to develop courses for enhancing the speaking abilities of their companies' leaders often blunder in the design phase. Not recognizing the Leadership Imperative, they err by describing them as "presentation courses." Instead, if they were guided by the Imperative, they would offer courses on "leadership talks." There is a big difference between presentations and leadership talks.
Presentations communicate information. Presentation courses are a dime a dozen. But leadership talks motivate people to believe in you and follow you. Leaders must speak many times daily - to individuals or groups in a variety of settings. When you provide courses to help them learn practical ways for delivering effective talks, to have them speak better so that they can lead better, you are benefitting their job performance and their careers.
Today, in most organizations, the presentation is the conventional method of communication. But when you make the leadership talk the key method by instituting "talk" courses and monitoring and evaluation systems broadly and deeply within the organization, you will help make your company more effective and efficient.
Link: Though such recognition is the first step in getting off the sidelines, it won't get you into the game. To get into the center of things, you must link your activities with results. Not your results - their results.
Clearly, your clients are being challenged to get results: sales' closes, operations efficiencies, productivity advances, etc. Some results are crucial. But other results are absolutely indispensable. Your job is to help your clients achieve their results, especially the indispensable results. You must be their "results partner." Furthermore, you must help them get sizable increases in those results. The results that they get with your help should be more than the results that they would have gotten without your help.
For instance, when developing company-wide objectives for leadership talks, you should not aim to have participants win a speaking "beauty contests" but instead to speak so that they motivate others to get increases in measured results. When you change the focus of the courses from speaking appearance to the reality of results, you change the participants' view of and commitment to the courses and also their view of and commitment to you in providing those courses. So have the participants define their indispensable results and link the principles and processes they learned in the course to getting measured increases in those results.
Execute: It's not enough to recognize. It's not enough to link. You must execute. "Execute" comes from a Latin root exsequi meaning "to follow continuously and vigorously to the end or even to 'the grave.'" Let's capture if not the letter at least the spirit of this lively root by insuring that your activities on behalf of your clients are well "executed," that they are carried out vigorously and continuously in their daily work throughout their careers. If those activities are helping them get results, you are truly their "results partner."
For instance, in regard to the leadership talk courses, HR professionals can lead an "initiative approach." At the conclusion of the course, each participant selects an initiative to institute back on the job. The aim of each initiative is to get sizable increases in their indispensable results by using the principles and processes that they learned.
The initiatives and their results should be concrete and measurable, such as productivity gains, increases in sales, operations efficiencies, and reduced cycle times.
The participants should be challenged to get increases in results above and beyond what they would have gotten without having taken the course. They should be challenged to get those increases within a mutually agreed upon time, such as quarterly reports.
In fact, if the participants don't achieve an increase in results that translates to at least ten times what the course costs, they should get their money back.
Don't stop there. Getting an increase in results is not the end of the course, it should be the beginning - the beginning of a new phase of getting results, the stepping up phase. The more results participants achieve, the more opportunities they have created to achieve even more results. The leadership talk course should have methods for instituting results' step-ups.
One such method can be a quarterly leadership-talk round table. Participants who graduate from the course meet once a quarter to discuss the results they have gotten and provide best practices for getting more. Human resources should organize, direct and facilitate the round tables. In this way, the results the leaders are getting should increase quarter after quarter.
When HR professionals promote such leadership talk courses, courses that are linked to getting increases in indispensable results and that come with the "results guarantee," those professionals are truly seen as results partners in their organizations.
I have used the leadership talk as an example of how you can greatly enhance your contributions to the company by applying the Leadership Imperative. Don't just apply the Imperative to such courses alone. Apply it to whatever challenge confronts you.
When you recognize how that challenge can be met through the Imperative, when you link the challenge to getting increases in measured results, and when you execute for results, you can transform your function.
You don't have to be as distinguished as Einstein or as awesome as Big Daddy Lipscomb, but you will in your individual way perceive the simple, powerful center of things. You'll be in the thick of the most important game your company is playing - helping change your world and the world of your clients.
2004 © The Filson Leadership Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
PERMISSION TO REPUBLISH: This article may be republished in newsletters and on web sites provided attribution is provided to the author, and it appears with the included copyright, resource box and live web site link. Email notice of intent to publish is appreciated but not required: mail to: brent@actionleadership.com
About The Author
The author of 23 books, Brent Filson's recent books are, THE LEADERSHIP TALK: THE GREATEST LEADERSHIP TOOL and 101 WAYS TO GIVE GREAT LEADERSHIP TALKS. He is founder and president of The Filson Leadership Group, Inc. ? and has worked with thousands of leaders worldwide during the past 20 years helping them achieve sizable increases in hard, measured results. Sign up for his free leadership ezine and get a free guide, "49 Ways To Turn Action Into Results," at www.actionleadership.com.
When is hate OK? When it's the feeling you have... Read More
"Leaders are born, not made." Right? Let me ask you... Read More
We need to engage our listeners and transform them into... Read More
Did you know that people who lead strategically resemble fine-tuned... Read More
Why talk about leadership?"Leadership is important whether you a leader... Read More
Who is Randy Gage? I first read about him in... Read More
"The payoff for the ethical person is a reputation for... Read More
Leadership is the foundation for all organizations, whether corporate, nonprofit... Read More
What is true Leadership.Is leadership something we are born with... Read More
As a hypnotherapist I specialise in helping people to develop... Read More
Years ago, a very wise, and often cynical boss of... Read More
As the 'Great And Powerful Oz' once said to Dorothy,... Read More
Within every business lies a network of people who are... Read More
Ask anyone about what makes a good leader and they... Read More
A Leader is not a certain type of person or... Read More
How many times have you seen the E = MC2... Read More
Life on our planet flourishes through feedback. If life forms... Read More
What do you think makes your company successful? Your newest... Read More
Quality leadership is a positive asset that is needed in... Read More
Leadership is motivational or it's stumbling in the dark. After... Read More
A great leader is able to inspire his/her workers to... Read More
"Show me someone who has done something worthwhile, and I'll... Read More
Which one is a goal? I will lose 15... Read More
Leadership is motivational or it's stumbling in the dark. The... Read More
During the Second World War, Winston Churchill had a framed... Read More
"Of every noble work the silent part is best, Of... Read More
After studying scores of great thinkers like Leonardo Da Vinci,... Read More
Chances are if you're interested in this post, you're looking... Read More
"How you think determines how you act. How you... Read More
What's holding your team back from experiencing "breakout performance"?It may... Read More
Do you ever strum your fingers on the desk top... Read More
The airline, Jet Blue, has been featured in many magazines... Read More
Recently I attended Cub Scout Leader Outdoor Experience training. This... Read More
"...I know that the only source of happiness is within... Read More
Are your meetings generally a waste of time? Do you... Read More
Effective leaders are comfortable with paradox. They can call on... Read More
We have all experienced walls or challenges in our work... Read More
When people make a decision (either consciously or unconsciously) to... Read More
In Part One, I described the laws of motivation. In... Read More
I have been looking for answers to what it takes... Read More
Have you ever noticed that since the early part of... Read More
Leadership is what every organization needs and so few have... Read More
Ask anyone about what makes a good leader and they... Read More
Here's how to get out of, or avoid, the "I... Read More
"Sooth 't were a pleasant life to lead, With nothing... Read More
Chances are if you're interested in this post, you're looking... Read More
A great leader is able to inspire his/her workers to... Read More
If you want to be a leader who attracts quality... Read More
Many potential leaders in business sabotage themselves and their organizations... Read More
People don't leave jobs; they leave bosses. -- AnonymousCongratulations. You're... Read More
Many people end up in a supervisory position or SOHO... Read More
"Click It" Into Gear!Ever wonder how two people can be... Read More
Leadership is the foundation for all organizations, whether corporate, nonprofit... Read More
... Read More
Each and every one of you has hidden deep inside... Read More
A Lasting Leadership Lesson: How One Leadership Talk By George... Read More
Lately the age-old business dilemma of how to stand out... Read More
What is true Leadership.Is leadership something we are born with... Read More
Years ago, when I was new in management circles, a... Read More
Reframing is looking at the situation with a new set... Read More
Tough and challenging times will surely come. That is a... Read More
It's interesting to hear the responses from executives when I... Read More
A Leader is not a certain type of person or... Read More
If you were to build a house, you would begin... Read More
Although new ideas lead to creative solutions, they can be... Read More
If you gather 100 experienced leaders together to share with... Read More
Leadership |