Home: Issue 4 2009 › Lead Story › Behind that locked door
Behind that locked door
03/11/2009 | Channel: Business, Human Resources
Robert Terry explores why some people become great team managers
Ask any entrepreneur to identify the happiest time in the life of any enterprise they created and most will tell you ‘the start-up’. There’s something about those first few months: the energy, the creativity, and the absence of rules all play to the entrepreneur’s strengths in ways that later phases of the organisation’s growth don’t.
In those early days, before the formalisation of roles and responsibilities and without the need for job descriptions, everyone seems to know what needs to be done and gives freely what later appears to require ‘performance management’ to extract. Maybe it’s because the new entity is necessarily small or the sense of purpose is so clear that everyone is, in the moment, ‘an entrepreneur’. What is clear is that the ‘start-up’ doesn’t last very long. All too soon, excitement gives way to routine, processes replace raw energy as the means of getting things done, and ‘staff’ take the place of ‘friends’. The infant enterprise has become an organisation and, for many entrepreneurs, that’s when managers
life gets more difficult.
Academics and commentators have written at length about the contrast between those early days and the later phases of organisational growth. One particularly perceptive piece written by Larry Greiner describes five phases of growth each followed by a predictable crisis: each crisis requires a shift in management practice before the next phase of growth can take place.
Tempting though it is to believe that life and business can be so determinate, there’s something that the Greiner Curve doesn’t take into consideration: people. People are the great unknown in organisational life. Unlike the structures through which we deploy their efforts, the processes by which tasks are achieved and the tools with which work is done, people are variable, unpredictable and (occasionally) perverse. They are the answer - and often the problem. They are simultaneously the source of competitive advantage and the greatest potential threat. There is little that their energy and creativity cannot achieve – but without it, organisations quickly become moribund. The greatest challenge for business leaders in organisations of all sizes is to re-create the energy, excitement and sheer goodwill experienced during start-up - and to do so every working day.
The terms ‘management’ and ‘leadership’ are the subject of endless debate, research and theorising: there are over 30,000 books on the subject of management currently in print. Yet most practising managers will make a pretty good stab at defining them unaided, given a moment or two of reflection.
They instinctively know that management involves organising, allocating and monitoring, whereas leadership is essentially about people. If invited to expand their views on management, they will accurately describe the processes by which work is achieved through others. They will talk about objectives, resources and measurement.
If asked to do the same on the subject of leadership they will, perhaps more hesitantly, talk about vision, strategy, and motivation. They will also tell you with complete confidence that, when times are hard, it’s leadership that will make the difference between survival and failure.
The suggestion is that some people in managerial roles are more successful than others in encouraging their colleagues to ‘go the extra mile’ - and those are the people we call leaders. Leaders in this instance are not necessarily those at the top of an organisation. They can be found at any level, but they share a defining characteristic: the ability to influence those around them positively. But what is it that they do that enables them to harness the discretionary effort that is so evident in a start-up and so often hard to find in mature organisations?
The answer lies somewhere in the previously mentioned rich capriciousness of people. All managers have a way of working that is a fusion of their personality, experience and functional expertise. When interacting with people, their style is part nature and part nurture. Or - to put it another way - part psychology, part training.
The psychological preferences and needs that shape our behaviour predispose us to interact more comfortably with some individuals than with others. There can, of course, be no guarantees where people are concerned and we should always remember that pre-disposition and skill are very different things But it is, however, generally held to be the case that ‘like-mindedness’, if we can call it that, can at the very least make interaction more straightforward.
It is also in the very nature of relationships that they are two-way, with both parties transmitting and receiving the signals that communicate ‘similarity’ or ‘difference’. So if a manager is inclined to communicate, collect data, make decisions and organise their work in ways similar to that preferred by only some of his or her colleagues, their other colleagues may well feel that they are treated ‘differently’ even though the manager may strenuously deny any bias.
This ‘take me as you find me’ style of management can be moderately effective, particularly if the organisation has in place good processes that enable those less in-tune with their manager to perform to a high level. But when times are hard, the shortcomings of this approach become evident. When money is tight and organisations are making tough decisions, managers who cannot work effectively with all of their colleagues will not be able to elicit the discretionary effort that can make the difference.
The effort-reward bargain that is the basis of the employment contract provides only for ‘an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay’. Anything above and beyond that is predicated on the relationship between the employee and his or her boss. It is as if the ideas, energy, commitment, active co-operation, forbearance and goodwill that we collectively call discretionary effort - or ‘going the extra mile’ - lie the other side of a door that is, for at least some people, firmly locked. Managers who reserve the right to pursue their own particular way of doing things, carrying only the one key, will always remain just that – managers. Those that strive to develop self-awareness, thoughtfulness, and selflessness will always have many keys at their disposal. And we will call them leaders.
Robert Terry is founder and MD of ASK. ASK is a global behavioural consultancy that offers customised management and leadership development solutions to many of the world’s best-known private and public sector organisations. The company has provided international clients such as Coca-Cola, GlaxoSmithKline and the Department for International Development with customised programmes that have helped transform management development and progression.
For further information, visit: www.askeurope.com.
In those early days, before the formalisation of roles and responsibilities and without the need for job descriptions, everyone seems to know what needs to be done and gives freely what later appears to require ‘performance management’ to extract. Maybe it’s because the new entity is necessarily small or the sense of purpose is so clear that everyone is, in the moment, ‘an entrepreneur’. What is clear is that the ‘start-up’ doesn’t last very long. All too soon, excitement gives way to routine, processes replace raw energy as the means of getting things done, and ‘staff’ take the place of ‘friends’. The infant enterprise has become an organisation and, for many entrepreneurs, that’s when managers
life gets more difficult.
Academics and commentators have written at length about the contrast between those early days and the later phases of organisational growth. One particularly perceptive piece written by Larry Greiner describes five phases of growth each followed by a predictable crisis: each crisis requires a shift in management practice before the next phase of growth can take place.
Tempting though it is to believe that life and business can be so determinate, there’s something that the Greiner Curve doesn’t take into consideration: people. People are the great unknown in organisational life. Unlike the structures through which we deploy their efforts, the processes by which tasks are achieved and the tools with which work is done, people are variable, unpredictable and (occasionally) perverse. They are the answer - and often the problem. They are simultaneously the source of competitive advantage and the greatest potential threat. There is little that their energy and creativity cannot achieve – but without it, organisations quickly become moribund. The greatest challenge for business leaders in organisations of all sizes is to re-create the energy, excitement and sheer goodwill experienced during start-up - and to do so every working day.
The terms ‘management’ and ‘leadership’ are the subject of endless debate, research and theorising: there are over 30,000 books on the subject of management currently in print. Yet most practising managers will make a pretty good stab at defining them unaided, given a moment or two of reflection.
They instinctively know that management involves organising, allocating and monitoring, whereas leadership is essentially about people. If invited to expand their views on management, they will accurately describe the processes by which work is achieved through others. They will talk about objectives, resources and measurement.
If asked to do the same on the subject of leadership they will, perhaps more hesitantly, talk about vision, strategy, and motivation. They will also tell you with complete confidence that, when times are hard, it’s leadership that will make the difference between survival and failure.
The suggestion is that some people in managerial roles are more successful than others in encouraging their colleagues to ‘go the extra mile’ - and those are the people we call leaders. Leaders in this instance are not necessarily those at the top of an organisation. They can be found at any level, but they share a defining characteristic: the ability to influence those around them positively. But what is it that they do that enables them to harness the discretionary effort that is so evident in a start-up and so often hard to find in mature organisations?
The answer lies somewhere in the previously mentioned rich capriciousness of people. All managers have a way of working that is a fusion of their personality, experience and functional expertise. When interacting with people, their style is part nature and part nurture. Or - to put it another way - part psychology, part training.
The psychological preferences and needs that shape our behaviour predispose us to interact more comfortably with some individuals than with others. There can, of course, be no guarantees where people are concerned and we should always remember that pre-disposition and skill are very different things But it is, however, generally held to be the case that ‘like-mindedness’, if we can call it that, can at the very least make interaction more straightforward.
It is also in the very nature of relationships that they are two-way, with both parties transmitting and receiving the signals that communicate ‘similarity’ or ‘difference’. So if a manager is inclined to communicate, collect data, make decisions and organise their work in ways similar to that preferred by only some of his or her colleagues, their other colleagues may well feel that they are treated ‘differently’ even though the manager may strenuously deny any bias.
This ‘take me as you find me’ style of management can be moderately effective, particularly if the organisation has in place good processes that enable those less in-tune with their manager to perform to a high level. But when times are hard, the shortcomings of this approach become evident. When money is tight and organisations are making tough decisions, managers who cannot work effectively with all of their colleagues will not be able to elicit the discretionary effort that can make the difference.
The effort-reward bargain that is the basis of the employment contract provides only for ‘an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay’. Anything above and beyond that is predicated on the relationship between the employee and his or her boss. It is as if the ideas, energy, commitment, active co-operation, forbearance and goodwill that we collectively call discretionary effort - or ‘going the extra mile’ - lie the other side of a door that is, for at least some people, firmly locked. Managers who reserve the right to pursue their own particular way of doing things, carrying only the one key, will always remain just that – managers. Those that strive to develop self-awareness, thoughtfulness, and selflessness will always have many keys at their disposal. And we will call them leaders.
Robert Terry is founder and MD of ASK. ASK is a global behavioural consultancy that offers customised management and leadership development solutions to many of the world’s best-known private and public sector organisations. The company has provided international clients such as Coca-Cola, GlaxoSmithKline and the Department for International Development with customised programmes that have helped transform management development and progression.
For further information, visit: www.askeurope.com.
