Leadership and fitting in

Nice article today I saw via Linkedin on Leadership and fitting in ....

http://leadingwithtrust.com/2013/07/07/five-ways-leaders-help-others-belong-not-just-fit-in/

some excerpt

Leaders create belonging when they…

1. Give power away and allow people to take ownership of their work. People who feel they belong in an organization have a sense of ownership; it’s their organization. That ownership mentality comes from being given responsibility and authority for doing their jobs and being given the freedom to achieve results. Equip and coach your people, delegate wisely, and then get out of their way.

2. Listen and respond to feedback. Most leaders say they are open to hearing feedback; fewer leaders actually listen and do something with it. Leaders create an environment of belonging and safety when they actually take the time to sit down and listen, acknowledge a person’s concerns, and discuss how they will respond to the feedback. People don’t feel they belong when leaders don’t listen, dismiss, or disregard their input.

3. Help people understand how their work connects to the broader goals or purpose of the organization. People have an innate desire to belong to something bigger than themselves. Leaders tap into this reservoir of power when they help their people understand how their daily work helps the organization achieve its goals and makes the world a better place.

4. Appreciate and celebrate the diversity of their team. Each person is created with unique gifts and abilities and it’s a leader’s responsibility to leverage the individual strengths of their people. Treating your team members as individuals rather than nameless and faceless workers creates a sense of belonging that’s extremely powerful. One of my team members, Ed, has a jovial personality and great dance moves. Who do you think we go to when we need to make a fun team video? Another team member, Kim, is a champion snowmobile racer. Who do we brag about when we have team gatherings? How much do you know about the personal lives of your people? Get to know them and watch their sense of belonging increase.

5. Accept people where they are but refuse to let them stay there. Good leaders accept their team members for who they are, yet also have a desire and commitment to help them learn, grow, and become the best versions of themselves possible. When leaders show commitment to their people’s growth, it fosters a sense of commitment and belonging that can’t be underestimated.

(c) Brené Brown.

IT Leadership

Here is one wonderful article on IT Leadership skills...

http://blog.vanharen.net/it-management/it-leadership-skills-are-a-must-for-all-it-managers/

Some excerpt ...

So what is Leadership? What are the necessary leadership capabilities and how can staff develop their capabilities to meet the changing role of IT?

Below are some of the key messages from CIOs we have met in the last year who have successfully addressed cultural issues and organizational change and have used frameworks for what they are: ‘Simply instruments to bring about a structured change in behavior’.
Leaders messages:  ‘Becoming Customer and Service focused is a cultural shift for IT…You can’t impose a Cultural shift!’. Executive support and executive action is required, supported by action at every level to address peoples’ attitudes and change peoples’ behavior. Executive managers must ‘reward, recognize and celebrate’ the new desired behavior when they see it. Executive managers need to use a set of tools, such as conscious leadership actions- ‘walk-the-talk’, ‘lead by example’, ‘confront undesirable behavior’. Managers must set expectations and identify deliverables and establish measures – from a ‘Customer perspective’.  Managers must mobilize their teams, they must inspire their teams and help change behavior. ‘It is a journey and the Leadership team must be on the same page’, they must be more visible in the organization, attending Service Management meetings and asking questions that make people think from a different perspective. ‘Changing culture requires communication and reinforcement through words, deeds, policies, processes and decisions every day of the year’!
One of the key success factors we discovered from engaging with numerous organizations was managers defining together with their teams ‘undesirable behavior’ and ‘desirable behavior’. A number of managers have used ABC of ICT workshops to capture customer perceived ‘undesirable behavior’ and then played a business simulations such as Apollo 13 to confront teams on what ‘Customer focused behavior’ or ‘effective team working’ really means, to test and develop desired behavior and capture improvement suggestions.  As one manager said ‘My job is to give the team mastery, autonomy and purpose, In the simulation they gained the mastery to translate theory into practice, I gave them the autonomy to take away and apply THEIR own improvements. In the game they experienced the impact of improvements they could realize together, which gave them a shared purpose… the shared experience helped create buy-in and energy to change…now my job is to facilitate the transfer to the day to day work and to ensure we don’t slip back into the old ways of working’.

Mmmmmmm……makes sense! What is it? – Middle Managers Must:

Meaning: Middle Managers Must give meaning and purpose to teams, relating to customer value. The framework (ITIL, Prince) is not the goal! It is the results and value they achieve
Mobilization: Middle Managers Must mobilize their teams to improve their own work. To work as teams, to effectively collaborate.  The people that know the best what needs improving are generally those at the sharp end!
Motivation: Middle Managers Must Inspire their teams and externally motivate them through consequence management: recognizing and rewarding desirable behavior and confronting undesirable behavior. Changing peoples attitudes and fostering intrinsic motivation in their teams.
Mastery: Middle Managers Must master leadership skills and capabilities to ‘Make change Happen’! At the same time ensuring teams have Mastery (skills), Autonomy (to change the way they work) and purpose (clear shared goals). Middle Managers Must master management of change, addressing attitude, behavior and culture.
Maturity:  Middle Managers Must foster a culture of CSI (Continual Service Improvement) in their teams. Improving your work IS your work, CSI should be a core capability for IT organizations to continually align their maturity to meet the ever changing world and pressures facing them from both the business demands and technology advancements.
Measure: Middle Managers Must ensure they are able to measure and demonstrate value . making what they do meaningful to their stakeholders.
Mandate: Middle Managers Must have the mandate from executive management to be able to lead. Executive managers must empower their management teams and support them in removing barriers to success. Executive managers must demonstrate this mandate by  ‘walking the talk’. As one CIO said to me ‘It starts with me leading by example and committing the time, effort and resources to making the transformation succeed’.

What is Leadership?

When a skilful and operationally driven manager gains influence in his/her workplace, he/she is beginning to develop his/her strategic thinking, and this manager has a growing number of followers and enjoys of the progressive recognition from Senior Management, the transformation from a plain manager into a nascent leader, simply has begun, and thereby his/her growing influence, power and authority that become in differentiating factors to encourage business transformation, corporate innovation and a strategic mindset.

This desirable metamorphosis typically happens when this manager, aside of having the right personality traits that are characteristics in a leader: passion to excel, innovative mindset, communicational skill-sets and strategic thinking, he/she has had a progressive career development path in different job positions and industries where he/she has learned the art of managing in highly complex business scenarios, has had the proper modelling of influential and recognized leaders and has been coached and mentored at the right time by influential professionals in the science of modelling business scenarios beyond from operational constrains, financial limitations and talent shortage.

In most of these transformations the blend of a corporate culture, an inspiring leadership, a motivating vision and a corporate attitude that is appreciative and supportive to encourage the assortment of skills, competences, expectations and initiatives of a valuable and proactive professional makes true the promise of becoming an excellent manager into an influential and empowered leader.

Leadership may be identified in function of the following attributes:

1. Empowerment in sharing an inspiring vision and creating empathy in managers and co-workers: A true leader, should be passionate professional and a charismatic individual with the willpower to create and develop an inspiring vision and generate empathy, full commitment and due admiration in others.

He/she should have strong skills, knowledge and intuition to understand those cultural issues that could be favorable for proper strategy execution and influential in managing all the enterprise changes that should be deployed by effective Senior Management commitment.

This leader should possess an outstanding capability to communicate pragmatically the scope, results and goals of the business strategy, in a way that generates due respect and trust.

2. Being credible and communicating effectively even in the most adverse circumstances: Other key factor of success is the role assumed for the leader of communicating effectively to managers and subordinates the advances and results obtained during strategy/project execution, by promoting feedback when necessary, sharing relevant information with stakeholders, generating employee’s engagement and making corrective actions when convenient.

This attitude helps to create confidence and trust from the whole organization toward their leaders, while being crucial to reduce those feelings of uncertainty, doubt and fear that in processes of profound transformation could create disengagement and demoralization in the workforce.

3. Integrity and Accountability: A leader should have solid values and reliable ethical principles that applies consistently as a value inherent to his/her professional engagement in the enterprise, being able to inspire virtue, correctness and righteousness in his/her followers and having the willingness of assuming the repercussions, consequences and effects of a mistaken decision, by identifying new opportunities and courses of action from learned lessons arisen of a failed experience.

For that matter other than Empowerment, Inspiring, Credible, Communicating, Integrity and Accountability - leading by example on what is needed makes a whole lot of difference.

Sathyameve Jayathe! सथ्यमेवे जयते!

What is Leadership?

When a skilful and operationally driven manager gains influence in his/her workplace, he/she is beginning to develop his/her strategic thinking, and this manager has a growing number of followers and enjoys of the progressive recognition from Senior Management, the transformation from a plain manager into a nascent leader, simply has begun, and thereby his/her growing influence, power and authority that become in differentiating factors to encourage business transformation, corporate innovation and a strategic mindset.

This desirable metamorphosis typically happens when this manager, aside of having the right personality traits that are characteristics in a leader: passion to excel, innovative mindset, communicational skill-sets and strategic thinking, he/she has had a progressive career development path in different job positions and industries where he/she has learned the art of managing in highly complex business scenarios, has had the proper modelling of influential and recognized leaders and has been coached and mentored at the right time by influential professionals in the science of modelling business scenarios beyond from operational constrains, financial limitations and talent shortage.

In most of these transformations the blend of a corporate culture, an inspiring leadership, a motivating vision and a corporate attitude that is appreciative and supportive to encourage the assortment of skills, competences, expectations and initiatives of a valuable and proactive professional makes true the promise of becoming an excellent manager into an influential and empowered leader.

Leadership may be identified in function of the following attributes:

1. Empowerment in sharing an inspiring vision and creating empathy in managers and co-workers: A true leader, should be passionate professional and a charismatic individual with the willpower to create and develop an inspiring vision and generate empathy, full commitment and due admiration in others.

He/she should have strong skills, knowledge and intuition to understand those cultural issues that could be favorable for proper strategy execution and influential in managing all the enterprise changes that should be deployed by effective Senior Management commitment.

This leader should possess an outstanding capability to communicate pragmatically the scope, results and goals of the business strategy, in a way that generates due respect and trust.

2. Being credible and communicating effectively even in the most adverse circumstances: Other key factor of success is the role assumed for the leader of communicating effectively to managers and subordinates the advances and results obtained during strategy/project execution, by promoting feedback when necessary, sharing relevant information with stakeholders, generating employee’s engagement and making corrective actions when convenient.

This attitude helps to create confidence and trust from the whole organization toward their leaders, while being crucial to reduce those feelings of uncertainty, doubt and fear that in processes of profound transformation could create disengagement and demoralization in the workforce.

3. Integrity and Accountability: A leader should have solid values and reliable ethical principles that applies consistently as a value inherent to his/her professional engagement in the enterprise, being able to inspire virtue, correctness and righteousness in his/her followers and having the willingness of assuming the repercussions, consequences and effects of a mistaken decision, by identifying new opportunities and courses of action from learned lessons arisen of a failed experience.

For that matter other than Empowerment, Inspiring, Credible, Communicating, Integrity and Accountability - leading by example on what is needed makes a whole lot of difference.

Sathyameve Jayathe! सथ्यमेवे जयते!