The Characteristics Of Successful Leaders

Even thought the basic traits of successful leaders are basic, few have them while others don't desire to lead.

Generally, successful leaders share four basic traits.  These are:

1.           Intelligence (technical and people smart)

      2.           Self-confidence
      3.           Communication skills (personal and group)
      4.           Sensitivity to group needs (empathetic)

Leaders/winners are responsible and accept accountability for their own actions.  They realize that everything they do in life they have decided to do and nothing they have to do.  They are not the puppet, but the puppet master.

Winners make things happen by pursuing the development of their potential, consistently and endlessly.  They leave nothing to chance and take responsibility for everything they do, and for making the best use of their talents and potential.

Effective Delegation

Personal and organizational growth is dependent upon effective delegation, which is important to effective management.  Effective management must focus on results instead of methods.  Stewardship delegation involves giving people a choice of method and makes them responsible for results.  It takes more time up front, but it’s time well spent.  Stewardship delegation includes:

1. Clear, joint understanding of the desired results.
2. Established guidelines that identify the parameters the individual must work within.  Minimize parameters to every extent possible, while listing formidable restrictions.
3. Identify what resources he or she may draw on, including financial, technical, organizational, and human resources.  Let them know what they can’t do, but not what to do.
4. Discuss how performance will be measured and at what intervals reporting and evaluation will be done.
5. Specify the end result of either a positive or negative evaluation in regard to such things as awards and/or different job opportunities.

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Improving Performance – The PRICE system

Blanchard and Lorber, Ph. D’s and co-authors of Putting the One Minute Manager to Work, explain how to involve everyone in improving performance in their PRICE system.

They suggest the following five steps:

1. Pinpoint:  define key performance areas in observable, measurable terms.
2. Record:  performance measurement
3. Involve:
1. Share information with whoever is accountable and/or can influence performance
2. Involve in establishing activators (areas of accountability, performance standards, instructions)
3. Consequences for goal accomplishment have to be agreed upon.
4. Coach:  how are you going to supervise, observe their performance, and give them feedback
5. Evaluate:
1. How will it be done
2. Anticipated payoff for established performance
3. Involve employee via self-evaluation
4. As performance improves feedback sessions should be scheduled less frequently.  You want to gradually give more and more responsibility to them for monitoring their own performance.

Like any other system, if it is failing, check the input variables for inaccuracies, inconsistencies, consequences, etc.  Perhaps the goal is too easy, or maybe too difficult to achieve.  Maybe there are non-motivating consequences involved.

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Understanding the thinking of a Micromanager

Micromanagers love asserting their power and authority just because they can. They control others with an uncompromising sense of entitlement and self-interest.

They don’t trust people to assess their own workload, so they routinely dictate priorities and distort deadlines. They are notorious for interrupting others, misusing and mismanaging meetings, and perpetuating crises.

Micromanagers want everything done their way. After all, they think the boss knows best. They dismiss others’ knowledge, experience, and ideas then hover over them to make sure they’re doing things their way.
Micromanagers share responsibility, but not authority. They allow no one to move forward without their approval—even on routine or time-sensitive matters.

Micromanagers monitor others to death—requiring a stream of needless reports that focus on activity over outcomes.

Tips to Dealing with one

Every micromanager has an agenda. Find out what it is and work with him. The micromanager feels compelled to know what’s going on. Find out what he needs to feel confident and comfortable, and then get it to him.

The micromanager fears things remaining stationary or at the same pace more than other managers.

- Confusion runs high with the micromanager. Clarify your
conversations and agreements in a trail of memos and e-mails.
- The micromanager is notorious for piling it on.
- The micromanager loves to impose and even distort deadlines. Be the
first to talk—offering a timeline for when you can do a task (not
when you can’t).
- The micromanager enjoys catching people in the act. Avoid being an
easy target and play by the rules—particularly on policies regarding
time and technology.
- The micromanager backs off with some more than others. Watch them
closely to learn the secrets of their success.

The micromanager will go to war on every issue. If you’re going to stand up to him, pick the battles that are most important to you.
Managers of supervisors need to know their place. That means directing and coaching them (supervisors) without interfering with their operations directly. They shouldn’t be directing employees when the supervisor should be. They shouldn’t be doing the scheduling, vacation calendars, or over-ruling the decisions of their supervisors.

Micromanagers that fail to leave decision-making to supervisors undermine their own success. Supervisors will feel unappreciated, a feeling of distrust, and a lack of importance overall. This results in the opposite effect of empowerment and is destructive to the workplace.

- - - - -

The first two years after my boss first arrived, he was very good for leaving decisions in the proper hands. Employees knew they had to deal with their supervisors. This eventually changed as employees who were refused days off by their immediate supervisor went over their head and got it approved. Next, the boss demanded the vacation calendar. Finally, he was meddling in other personal conflicts on the floor that should’ve been left to the floor supervisor. This problem grew to the point where people got what they wanted from their supervisor or they’d say, “Fine, I’ll just take it to Jim, he’ll okay it.” Eventually, Jim realized we were being played by some of the employees and stopped this bad practice.

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James 14 - What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? 15Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. 16If one of you says to him, “Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? 17In the same way, faith by itself, if not accompanied by action, is dead.

James 2:26 - - As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.

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Vocational Needs

If your organization is failing to provide the vocational needs that your workers desire, they aren’t going to be satisfied or motivated to do their best work. Successful managers will try to fulfill as many of these needs as they possibly can. In doing so, they will find a happier, more content workforce that produces more. Employees are more likely to be motivated when they are used according to their capabilities. When they’re not, the result is failure, a powerful demotivator, and continuous failure can drive motivation to non-existence. Managers must maximize motivation while downplaying failures.

Do you really know what you’re looking for in your job? Can you answer the following questions or are you unsure?
- What intrinsic or extrinsic rewards are you looking for?
- Is your boss helping you in ways that he or she can?
- Is he or she taking credit for your accomplishments without
recognizing you in any way?
- When raises are given, does everyone get the same even though some
aren’t doing nearly the same as you and you have identical positions?
- Is your boss holding you back from what you want?
- Have you made your boss fully aware of your goals?
- Do you like what you’re doing?
- Is your job rewarding and challenging?
- Does your job allow you the freedom to be innovative, creative, and
give input?
- Does your boss undermine you and your authority, or promote you and
your interests?
- Does you job allow you enough time to have a healthy existence outside
of work?
- Are you locked in place or are there promotional opportunities?
- Do you feel appreciated, respected, and properly rewarded and/or
compensated?
- If you hate your job, why are you staying? Are job security, more
pay, and benefits worth your unhappiness?
- In five years what do you want to be doing? In ten? In twenty?

These are important questions that you should know right off-hand. A person has to know what they want and take a path that allows them to get it.

A supervisor should do whatever he or she can to fulfill the vocational needs of each of their employees. Employees that receive the investment of time and money in their development are happier and make better workers. If you want them to take ownership of their positions, take accountability, and accept responsibility, you must give them the ability to affect their work. The supervisor should negotiate goals with the worker and leave the methods to them.

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Vocational needs taken from the Minnesota Importance Questionnaire (see Psychology – Human Relations and Work Adjustment, 7th Edition, pp. 144-145) include:

Ability utilization --The need to use one’s abilities.
Achievement -- The need to get a feeling of accomplishments.
Activity -- The need to be busy all the time.
Advancement -- The need for opportunities to advance.
Authority -- The need to be able to tell others what to do.
Company policies and practices -- The need for fair administration of company policies.
Compensation -- The need to be paid well in comparison with others.
Co-workers -- The need for co-workers who are easy to make friends with.
Creativity -- The need to try out some of one’s own ideas.
Independence -- The need to be able to work alone on the job.
Moral values -- The need to be able to work without feeling it is wrong.
Recognition -- The need for approval and acknowledgment for the work one does.
Responsibility -- The need to make decisions on one’s own.
Security -- The need for steady employment.
Social service -- The need to be able to do things for other people.
Social status -- The need to be “somebody” in the community.
Supervision – human relations -- The need for a boss who backs up the workers.
Supervision – technical --The need for a boss who trains the workers well.
Variety -- The need to do something different every day.
Working conditions -- The need for safe, clean, and secure conditions.

Six values underlying these needs that are important for a work environment are:
1) Safety (predictable and stable).
2) Comfort (comfortable and free of stress).
3) Status (provides recognition and prestige).
4) Altruism (fosters harmony with and service to others).
5) Achievement (encourages accomplishments).
6) Autonomy (stimulate initiative).

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Productive Meetings

Are your meetings all about you lecturing and everyone else listening? If it is, you can bet they are drifting off to another place far away. Personally, I find such meetings tortuous. If the topic isn’t interesting, or there is no interaction, I’m doodling in my notebook praying for it to be over. Meetings should focus on a specific theme, so people aren’t bounced all over the place. If you want to hold their interest, there must be active participation.

When you need to motivate and enlist the help of your employee’s you should meet in small groups. Each person should receive an advance copy of the agenda and what subjects they should be prepared to discuss. This would give each the opportunity to ponder his or her ideas, talk to others, and decide what they want to share with the group.

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Recognition

Recognition is important to every organization, but must be carefully done to avoid harm. Recognition should be reserved for those whose behavior exemplifies:

-Superior service
-A positive attitude
-Good attendance
-Effectiveness
-Innovation
-Initiative
-Loyalty
-Leadership
-Teamwork
-Efficiency
-Quality

Every recognition system should have a process that fairly and reasonably reconciles performance gaps. This happens when employees fall short of their marks for exceptional reasons or supervisors fail to clearly specify expectations.

I have been a participant of many incentive programs that seemed designed to deceive people into being motivated. The deck seemed stacked in our favor early in the year, but seemed to slip quickly away as the end of the fiscal year neared. It turned out that headquarters designed systems that were easier to meet initially, but incredibly difficult at the end of the year. In the end, we felt deceived and betrayed. One program after another seemed to do exactly the same thing. Soon everyone started wondering how headquarters got us the next time an incentive plan came around.

The program that has been in place since 2004 contains various loopholes. It is comprised of many variables outside of a managers’ control, leaving them at the mercy of their workers and headquarters to decide what kind of bonus/raise they received at the end of the year. Revenue projections for each office failed to take into account the economic constraints of each. A small office stumbled financially when a single business closed. You could ask for reconsideration based on this argument but you were unlikely to get a positive ruling from your boss. Worse yet, if you decided to appeal his or her decision, it went back to them and then on to their boss. Their boss just rubberstamped the same decision for them. Exceptions were possible but I never heard of it. This motivation system failed to accomplish anything but de-motivate managers.

A larger problem was that a person could easily see where their bonus was approximately going to be months in advance. Some that knew their fate figured that if he or she were going to fail why not fail larger and make it easier the following year. This system could fail you year after year, even when you tried earnestly to do the best you could. Potentially, you could be raising your bar of expectation year after year without ever getting a decent raise. In fact, this is where many managers fall every year, despite any level of effort. Ideally, all superior achievers could reach the top. This system left little in your control and left many things to luck or circumstance. It was simply a losing proposition.

The objectives you exchange with your boss are not the same ones your raise depends on. They were goals that were to be achieved in addition to the many already determined by headquarters and the area. The program determined your raise through a weighted average of local goals (70%) and corporate goals (30%). The local goals were comprised of:
- Revenue (35%)
- Total work hours (35%)
- Scan rates (20%) – comprised of two different components
- Customer Satisfaction Measurement (10%)

The corporate goals included 10 different objectives, well outside the control of a single manager, especially those in small offices.

Problems:

- Work hours depend in part on environmental factors, retention, and training. Unfortunately, training hours counted against your performance and discouraged it. Once I had to fire an employee and the office worked shorthanded until a new employee was hired. This affected the expenses of the office and counted against my performance. Budget adjustment requests were denied. Additionally, new employees required forty plus hours of training before they could begin productive work. In a small office, this single-handedly blows the work hour goal apart. There are supposed to budget adjustments for such items, but there is no guarantee that you will get it. In fact, one year after promises of numerous adjustments I received none at the end of the year and my boss made no adjustment for it.
- Scan rates didn’t account for pieces that wouldn’t scan; no efficient tracking program was in place to find problems.
- Too many objectives (five local + 10 corporate) many of which are outside the realm of influence by managers.

A well-designed incentive-pay plan can bind people and objectives together, offering a significant advantage in the competitive marketplace. On the other side, a poorly designed plan can de-motivate. If there’s a flaw in the plan, it will be found and exploited. Likewise, if the plan contains variables out of the managers control, it can have an adverse effect. For example, one incentive plan I know of is based largely on achieving certain revenue goals. However, revenue goals for large and small offices aren’t equally achievable. When you’re in a small community and a single business leaves, your goals can become impossible. Larger offices, on the contrary, have other businesses that they can pursue for additional revenues.

There is still one way for the upper manager to spare the harmed supervisor and that is by making an exception for this occurrence. They need to consider what the revenue would have been had the company not pulled out and everything else had been the same. When the upper manager refuses to consider this exception the supervisor loses faith in the program and the manager. This is exactly what the incentive program was supposed to eliminate. When you dock others for things out of their control you are really saying “I don’t value you or care for your explanation.”

Incentive plans should have goals that are simply stated, have no hidden agenda, and be easy to track. If you can’t pinpoint the source of the problem(s), the variable shouldn’t be included in the incentive plan. You must be able to affect the outcome for it to be a variable in the incentive plan. Unachievable expectations that are outside of a persons control, does nothing but irritate and demoralize employees.

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