“The end of culture is an intelligent and happy face”. A leader’s action should lead others to inspire more, dream more, learn more, act more…… these are the baby steps towards, development of leadership quality and traits.
“The end of culture is an intelligent and happy face”. A leader’s action should lead others to inspire more, dream more, learn more, act more…… these are the baby steps towards, development of leadership quality and traits.
A leader creates an environment of free speech, of honest expression and a joint celebration of individual successes. Great leaders appreciate to create, within the organisation, an all pervading sense of happiness.
Each entity or organisation is faced with external and internal challenges. The danger from within the organisation, is of a divided team or unsure colleagues, who either deliberately or may be in complete innocence, will pull the institution apart from all directions. In these circumstances, how can any organisation swim against the tide of the challenges of marketplace? Internal dissensions create a culture of shattered hopes and expectations.
Good leadership does not just chase numbers, they involve in the development of an environment that comes to be one of enabling spirit for performance. As a leader, people management must dominate your behaviour than mere number engagement. The numbers (budgets) trust my word, will all get achieved, if your attention to people management takes precedence over all aspects of running an organisation; the vice-versa of this, is prone to hit the iceberg of resistance from your team. What the team does not subscribe with wholehearted support will surely hit the rocks.
In my role as a manager of people, I have been severely criticised for developing a ‘parental management’ approach. But I never have given up, my stance and take on the subject. I have resolutely stood for management by care and empathy. It has helped always in the creation and deliverance of unbelievable performance by the teams. I led, across various organisations. The response to respectful treatment of colleagues is phenomenal, in terms of the commitment you receive to achieve the assigned corporate objectives.
Every single staff - from janitor to the most senior management colleagues - felt totally comfortable to confide in me, their personal and professional issues and aspirations. It brought me and them, only further closer to achieve our unified objectives. In handling such requests from colleagues to help them, in either their professional or personal resolution of issues, what did I do? In practical terms, did I always solve their problems? No!
I just lent my ears and allocated time, to hear them out, with sincere empathy. In doing so, half of the problem (largely falsely perceived by most team-mates) would melt away by my mere “listening” with rapt attention. In most cases, no further action was required.
A colleague of mine, is a diehard critic of my quest to spending time, listening to the ‘woes’ of the staff, irrespective of their hierarchical position – instead she says that I should communicate more through “Post-It-Notes”, like she saw some other CEO, do so, in an MNC she had worked for. Not allowing access to my office is a rebellious and repulsive thought.
I have campaigned against this thought my entire career. Instead, I subscribe that for healthy organisational culture, give colleagues your shoulder to cry upon – if you don’t they may find a willing shoulder outside the organisation, which surely will be disastrous for the company’s repute.
Leaders create unity in ranks. We have, at school, all read, in Aesop's Fables, how a lion could not attack, the four cows, who always were herded together – the day they quarrelled amongst themselves and left to graze alone, on the pastures, the lion made a good and hearty meal of each of them. So, does the market to organisations that have management teams, who are at each other’s throats. The competitive spirit in a team is meant for usage outside the organisation, not within.
In a recent presentation, I asked colleagues for generating “cut-throat co-operation” towards the success of a new initiative. I am certain, the team will respond, positively. A good leader will be cognisant of the importance to appeal to both, the intelligent and emotional quotient of his team members.
In building teams and great organisations, the ingredients are values and beliefs. It is suicidal to replace them with performance in numbers. I am a diehard practitioner and believer in the concept that if you take care of ‘people’ – they will take care of ‘numbers’. Avoid creation of a culture of self-preservation; where colleagues shy deliberately – towards ensuring that no information is shared. Here the team is deprived of what could be critical information.
After resigning, as executive director, from Goldman Sach’s having served them for twelve years, Greg Smith, in a New York Times, Editorial (possibly op-ed) wrote in 2012, the following about culture; “The culture was the secret sauce that made this place great and allowed us to earn our clients’ trust for 143 years. It wasn’t just about making money; this alone will not sustain a firm so long. It had something to do with pride and belief in the organisation. I am sad to say that I look around today and see virtually no trace of culture that made me love working for this firm for many years. I no longer have the pride, or the belief. Leadership used to be about ideas, setting an example and doing the right thing. Today, if you make enough money for the firm (and are not currently an ex-murderer) you will be promoted into a position of influence…. the current CEO, has lost hold of the firm’s culture on their watch.” Such demise of great organisational standards of creating an enabling culture for excellent performance has happened with many firms across cultures and geographies.
No leader will create or promote a culture of fear. Such environment, ie of fear, subscribes to intimidating and humiliating colleagues. The leaders, who indulge into the promotion of such managerial attitude, do so, based on either positional authority or “inherited” authority. Such attitudes are outdated. They don’t work now.
I have witnessed, well read, well-spoken and fairly well educated colleagues carrying on their swelled heads, a feudal mind-set – that inspires them to think, they will get away by bullying people. No. It just doesn’t work anymore. To such manager, the rate of staff turnover should be sent by HR division on a weekly basis! It may help them change their attitude.
It is an amazing aspect that most books, journals, magazines, that talk about “great leadership” are published across the Atlantic; but most unfortunately and to the extent of leaving one baffled; it is from there that one witnesses the emergence of management concepts and practices, that lead towards de-humanisation of management eg; lean and mean management! The excessive reliance on de-personalising human interaction through tech based mediums, has only further exacerbated, the issue of disharmony, within teams. Standing-up for your team, when the clips are down, is a leadership trait – no blame game upon those who report to you.
Never do that. In fact, shield those reporting to you, not unjustly, from the wrath of your seniors. I have seen so many leaders losing their de-jure position, due to this habit of passing the buck of non-performance to teams; rather than standing stall, as a bulwark to any reprisal or initiation of negative action, by senior management.
A leader defends his team, he doesn’t blame them, but instead puts on a plaque that reads, ‘the buck stops here’. These are daring leaders. Readers, reminds you of which US president?
In assessing performance, there is no harm to let people bash in the glory of their achievements – it is not always arrogance when colleagues, begin conversations with, “I did this…..”; “it was me”, who pointed out this major lapse in revenue generation”, etc. These self-indulging moments can be turned by the supervisors to better the performance of all other colleagues.
Personally, I have scant respect to mission / vision statements or vows of allegiance to some high-sounding set of organisation’s values – because they mean nothing if not followed in ‘letter and spirit’. In most corporates, the working environment / culture is in total contrast to the “well-crafted” values – which carried no value, in the minds of its proponents.
For Leadership, nothing is more enduring than character. Those possessed of it, live by it. These leaders take bold decisions. They look beyond themselves. They do, what is right, not what is popular. (Imran Khan, the new Prime Minister, on the block, please note).
In any organisation, there are pools of toxically polluted individuals, either dare to eliminate them or at least learn to stay clear of them. Any association with them is bound to weaken the best cultural standards of the organisations. Leaders never compromise character for reputation. While Emerson may have thought that, ‘culture opens the sense of beauty (in The Conduct of life); however, in “The Summing Up” Somerset Maugham writes, “The value of culture is its effect on character. It avails nothing, it ennobles and strengthens that. Its use is for life. Its aim is not beauty but goodness”.
I believe culture, and in particular corporate culture should induce both inherent beauty of the human thought and the inherent goodness of the human spirit. The beast in human body is only tamed and controlled by strong culture.
The writer is a banker and a freelance columnist
