Leadership and reward

How important being rewarded is, becomes clear when we look at its influence on human behavior. Which the credit crunch from 2008 makes clear. Then it became clear that loan officers had created bad debt, because they were rewarded for every mortgage they created.

Rewards
When it comes to rewards, the first that comes to mind is compensation, paid at the end of the month or the end of the year in money. Compensation is often combined with personnel benefits, which may not be directly valued in money, but they represent money. Next to compensation and benefits there are other forms of rewarding.
The first one that may come to mind is the reward received from the work done. This can be the feeling of accomplishment, when a job is done succesfully. Of the feeling of success when a job is ready. Or the feeling that the job was a learning opportunity.
A completely different form of rewarding is that of the recognition by others. This can be verbal. Or in the form of new projects or promotion.
An often overlooked form of rewarding is that which people feel when they are part of a group or team that is successful or is seen as successful.

So leaders have different means of rewarding themselves and others.

Effective rewarding
The most effective method of rewarding does not exist, because all humans experience different forms of rewarding and combinations of rewarding as pleasant. So there will be employees who like to get a large salary and great benefits. Where others would rather be rewarded with difficult projects and find the reward in successfully closing projects.

This difference in experience of rewarding, means that leaders need to search for the right combination of rewards for every single employee.

An important point when it comes to rewarding, that should not be forgetting, is that the stronger the emphasis on short term rewards, the faster employees will find ways to receive the reward. And that behavior is even strengthened by the example that they get.

So the effectiveness of a mix of rewards is also influenced by the example that leaders give.

For a leader this means making visible how he experiences the way he is rewarded. And this in itself is a reward for the employees, because the leader shows that he finds his employees important enough to make them part of his experience.

Leadership and groups

Leadership is often seen as something that is part of a group. In corporations groups are a way of life. And leadership can be for the corporation as a whole or for subgroups. Subgroups are created when dividing the corporation into departments with specific tasks. But they can also be created for a specific temporary task.

Departments
Most organizations that grow beyond twenty persons, automatically divide themselves into specialist groups. Accounting, purchase and sales, cleaning, they are all part of the organization. Specialization has its advantage over generalization, when it comes to certain organizational tasks. These departments often doe not really need leadership. Especially when the members are highly specialized and highly trained. Often the specialists know exactly what to do and only need someone to keep them up to date with higher management and in contact with other departments.

Taskgroups
Groups that are specially formed for a certain task often have need of internal leadership. But they also need external leadership, to support their work. Especially if the task has implications for the company policy or if it is to prepare change.

Internal leadership of groups is needed to make the group work efficient and effective. However this internal leadership does not necessarilly has to be filled by one person. Belbin showed that the success of a group is defined by the fulfillment of nine roles. In which one person can very well occupy two group roles.

The external leadership is needed to make it possible for the group to do its work. But also to let the groups work have effect. Without the external leadership the work the group has done could very well get lost in the politics of any organization that is larger than 50 members.

Leadership and getting trained

Although it is often stated that leaders are born and not made, it is off course just the opposite. A born leader without the possibility to practice will never become a leader. Where a future leader with lots of chances to practice, automatically becomes a better leader.

Training leaders
The most important part of leadership is getting a chance to practice. If this practice is structured and formal or informal and unstructured does not matter. For many of todays leaders the rule was, that they encountered situaties in which they could develop there talents as a leader.

From the point of view of an organization, it is off course better to work structured at the development of future leaders. There is however a but attached to this method.

A however
The danger of training leaders is that they are trained for the present or the past, not for the future. It is possible to train for the future, but that takes a different approach to training, from what today is main stream. In the current economy most trainings are based on what we already know. The knowledge that is passed on, is based on the past or is current at the moment the leaderships position is to be taken. The knowledge is seldom based on the fact that the world changes.

Few future leaders following an official trainingprogram learn to gather knowledge to understand the future. Often the idea is, that this will happen by itself as one is busy learning. A second thought is that learning to gather knowledge and information automatically leads to understanding the current situation. That this a flawed idea was proven in 2008 by the economic crisis, that was caused when the mortgage industry collapsed.

So it takes more to make someone understand the information he has received or gathered himself in his current situation.

Leadership and training 2

A leader has three ways in which he is involved with training. The first is his own training to become a leader. This is often a combination of informal and formal training. Secondly he is involved in the training of future leaders, to get them ready to take their position as a leader, when it is time for the leader to step down. Thirdly as part of the strategy of the organization. Here I am only going to talk about the training of leaders.

The standard method

Save a few companies, most companies choose to hunt and select their new leaders outside their organization. The choice is for proven leadership quality. That has two reasons. First you prevent jealous reactions of other managers, who did not make it into the leadership position. Second you have proof that the new leader can lead and can bear the lesser aspects of the function of leader.

The prevention of jealousy between managers is important to an organization, because jealousy can create adverse powers. The managers that were passed over, can start an internal war or use their position to undermine the new leader. And every internal resistance has negative effects on the effectiveness of an organization.

The advantage of the proof of leadership is that you prevent someone failing, because he was not ready for the leadership role. However the proof is off course only proof for the fact that the leader could lead the organization he left. It can never be proof, that he can lead the organization he is going to lead. Except off course is both organizations are identical to the last point.

The other approach

A different approach is the management development program for high potentials. A combination of training and development for employees who show potential to realise that potential.

These programs begin off course with the selection of the HiPo's, by their manager, a manager HRM or HRD or maybe even a manager MD and a manager high in the hierarchy of the organization, sometimes the current leader.

Next the HiPo's get to participate in all kinds of training and development, directed at realising their potential. Often this potential strands in a management position at middle management levels. Not because they lack potential, but because their are more people with potential, then positions for managers.

This approach often flounders at the possibility to practice with the new knowledge acquired during the MD program. An effect from that fact that training is something completely different from a working organization. A proper working MD program will try to make the training situation resemble the practice of the organization and will try to integrate the training into the practical organization.

Leadership and courage

Courage is probably the most important talent a leader should have. How else can you have the guts to act differently from the group. Because that is what leadership is, an aberration. A leader is a single person, who does exactly what the group does not want: being different.

Courageous leadership
Achieving leadership can be done through two routes. The first is complete conviction of your leadership. You are the only one, who could be the leader. You could call this sociopathic leadership. You were born to be a leader and no one else is right. For this kind of leadership courage is not necessary. There is not even room for courage, because leadership is not feared. Leadership is the only logical conclusion of ones carrier.
The second form of achieving leadership is through love. First loving yourself as a human being. Using the principle that a human is good the way he is and perfection is not necessary. Second loving others as they are.
The leadership is not a logical conclusion, but a logical effect of the love you feel. And from this love for yourself, you feel love for others. You do not see your leadership as a necessity, but as a possibility to help others discover their love.
This kind of leadership takes courage. Because this type of leader recognizes human weakness and will experience fear during its leadership. Conquering this fear takes courage, because it needs trust, that those fears are unfounded.
This in contradiction to the sociopathic leader, who might feel fear, but will see it as completely irrational, because his leadership does not know any problems.

Developing courage
So the sociopathic leader has no need to for courage, because he does not know it. But the leader who took is task because of love, will need courage. Luckily it is not that difficult to develop courage, when you feel love, and if you live your life on the basis of love. The love you feel for yourself and others, will give you the power to address your task as a leader with courage.
So to develop courage, you must love yourself. And that means most of all knowing yourself. Knowing yourself with all your good en bad talents and look at them with love.

Leadership and gulliblility

The worst a leader can happen is getting caught being gullible. Gullible does off course have a very negative connotation, as it means dumb trusting. The point however is, that to understand what is really asked, one has to know more about this world than possible. So one has to be gullible to be able to live in this world.

So it is impossible for a leader to prevent being used for his gullibility. Not only because it would make life a living hell. But also because it would that you could trust nobody. Which would end in the impossibility to work with anyone.

Off course trust and gullibility does not mean that you can not be interested in someone else. And maybe that is where the solution lies to prevent misuse of gullibility. Although interest is a form of gullibility. As you need to trust the other to answer your questions truthfully. Byt by asking questions, you lessen the possibility that the other will take advantage of your trust. Because unanswered questions point to a problem that needs to be research, so you can help finding a solution.

Leadership and the truth

On a Dutch blog for managers they had two items. One item was about lying, the other was about telling the truth. The conclusion you would get from it was that lying is a legitimate action and truth is an expensive commodity, best kept hidden.

Unfortunately the right to speak the truth is countered with arguments that make it clear that the truth is expensive when you hide behind lies. And although the Dutch management blog, gives many reasons to lie, and why it is justified, there is of course only one real reason to lie. And that reason is to protect others from your own incompetence to give them the truth in the form of a gift.

Because what is the truth really? It is no more then your observation of reality, given in your own words. So the truth as such does not exist in most cases. The truth often is depend on the focus of the observer. So a teenager will find the rules of his parents stifling. Where the parents will see the rules as protection for the teenager. A CEO will see his rules as a means to protect the profitability of the company. Where the account manager will see the rules as an obstacle for client satisfaction.

So the truth often is no more then a point of view, that even more often than not will be defended every inch of the way.