Opinion: Enough of Leadership - How About Some Decent Management
Is it time to shelve the 360 degree evaluations and get back to basics, asks Andrew Mayo?
I want to confess to some weariness with the cult of leadership – and more than that, a conviction that it isn’t doing us very much good.
In many organisations the spend on leadership development is probably the highest component of the training budget. And yet how many organisations can show that they have better performance as a result of all this effort?
Paul Kearns made much publicity when he accused the BBC of having achieved practically nothing from millions of pounds spent on their programme. My company was asked to evaluate a leadership programme by a major retailer. The CEO introduced the project to us with a cry of frustration: "I have spent more than a million on this and I still can’t see that we have better leaders than anyone else!" We found, similarly to Paul, that there was no evidence that anything had changed as a result, although individual participants had felt considerable personal benefit. It had possibly contributed to some higher motivation and temporary loyalty, but this could not be proved.
"Educated through using 360 feedback and extensive leadership competency frameworks, people have an acuter sense of their leaders’ shortcomings."
Andrew Mayo, Mayo Learning International
One outcome is sure – educated through using 360 feedback and extensive leadership competency frameworks, people look upwards and have an acuter sense of their leaders’ shortcomings.
Of course most organisations do genuinely perceive a need for better leaders. That will probably always be true as we can never say we "now have the best", and each individual needs a leadership learning journey. You may be able to point me to some role model cases where people’s behaviour and leadership skills have visibly improved. But you will probably keep quiet about the great majority for whom this is not so.
A large government department recently completed their opinion survey and to their concern, only 13% reported confidence in their leadership (as the question was phrased). There had been two leadership development programmes in the last five years – they thought they needed another. No, I don’t think so.
I am not saying effective leadership is not important. But what distresses me all the time in the UK is awful management. It’s a good strategy in determining learning needs to look at everyday simple things that have gone wrong in the organisation and with its customers, and to work backwards as to what the cause or causes were. We’ll find time and time again that it was some area of poor management.
Why do public services often work so badly? Is it because we have a default in leadership of those organisations responsible? Probably yes – but not because they lack strategies and visions and change programmes, but because they have failed to invest in management skills. The professional management skills of planning, organising, scheduling, problem solving, decision taking, controlling, project management are just as important as the people skills so beloved of HR.
Look at one of the registers of training courses available and see how many management or leadership courses tackle these professional skills vs those focused on self awareness, self development and emotional intelligence (or similar).
"What distresses me all the time in the UK is awful management."
One of the more useful of today’s fashions is the concern for employee engagement. I am involved in some studies myself as to how this affects performance. Time and again, with people at all levels and especially the front line, the message is that management skills are a primary influence on engagement. People skills of course – communicating the right things to the right people in the right way at the right time; dealing with performance; understanding individual and team needs (as Adair would put it) – but also competence at getting the task achieved.
We can study great leaders but we cannot imitate them. We can be bombarded by endless research studies as to the characteristics of effective leadership. We can become self aware through feedback, and adjust some of our behaviours. We can try and create a vision to inspire our people. But the reality is that the vast majority of people who have a responsibility for others have limited degrees of freedom as leaders. Their objectives and agenda are set for them by others. Their job is to achieve results and solve problems, day in and day out. Lets give the 360’s a rest for a while and help managers learn the basics – and maybe customers and the public will get a better life.
Peter Cook , 23 January 2008 @ 17:58 PM Learning Leadership - Comment on Bennet's entry
This is proving a very fruitful and rich commentary. Thanks for taking the time to explain your perspective on conensual leadership. It can indeed lead to 'lowest common denominator' results.
Bennet Simonton , 23 January 2008 @ 11:52 AM Response to Peter
Peter,
You point is well taken. Any simple test has glaring weaknesses and you have pointed out the most glaring weakness of my simple test.
That is the reason why any analysis must be done in person, one on one. If the manager is being irresponsible and is pandering to the workforce, that would be most apparent in the results being achieved and in the comments of the very best employees who are always against not enforcing standards.
Any manager must in the main be the ultimate protector of all standards, not just those related to respect, courtesy, compassion, humility and the like. Standards such as industriousness, knowledge, timeliness, professionalism and other work ethic related standards must also be protected by the manager.
And fairness or respect applies to those who shirk their responsibilities since it is unfair and disrespectful to other members of the workforce for one shirker to expect others to make up for his/her shortcomings. So if discipline is not being used by the manager to correct those who shirk, the manager is leading the workforce members to be shirkers. That is very bad leadership.
There are quite a few other similar related issues and weaknesses of any short test, but none as important.
In short, I am totally against what you call consensual leadership. Consensus generally arrives at the lowest standards of performance. Superior leadership envisions the leader as the standard bearer who by bringing up those standards (is that clean enough or is the quality hight enough to satisfy customers, etc) and getting others to address how to meet them. The workforce willingly does this since everyone respects the highest standards. So the leader builds consensus for how to meet the highest standards of all values in all actions.
Thanks for bringing to light a very important issue, Peter.
Best regards, Ben Author "Leading People to be Highly Motivated and Committed" Bennet Simonton
Peter Cook , 21 January 2008 @ 22:43 PM Leadership measures can be more complex than suggested
Hi again,
Your ten point list is useful and finding a bundle of measures is realtively easy.
On the 10 points you suggest, I feel they err on one style of leadership in the main.
The idea that leaders never tell but always consult has led to some pretty fluffy leadership behaviour, especially in public service contexts. I'd argue that there is a need to be clear in ambiguous situations when the value of consensual leadership is overwhelmed by the need for direction. Turnaround specialists in particular are rather good at 'benevolent dictatorship'?
Bennet Simonton , 18 January 2008 @ 18:16 PM Measuring Leadership Is Not So Hard
Measuring managerial leadership is extremely important. If one knows those actions which reflect superior leadership, measuring/testing whether or not they exist and to what extent is not so difficult. A test that meets these criteria follows.
This is a simple test of 10 questions. Rank your leadership (or that of a manager) on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the best or almost always, 1 being the worst or almost never. Add up the points for each question.
If you score close to 100, I would expect that your employees will be over 3 times more productive than if your score was 30 or less. In addition, employees will unleash their full potential creativity and innovation, love to come to work and have very high morale. :)
DOES THE MANAGER
-provide regular and frequent opportunities for employees to voice complaints, suggestions and questions, provide reasonable and timely responses, and give employees what they say they need to do a better job? (At least weekly?)
-elicit answers/responses from the team and get them to use their brainpower to solve problems?
-listen to employees with 100% attention without distraction, without trying to figure out a response and with the use of follow-up questions to obtain missing details and suggested fixes?
-refrain from giving orders since by their nature they demeaning and disrespectful and destroy innovation and commitment?
-treat members better in terms of humility, respect, timely and high quality responses, forthrightness, trust, admission of error, etc than they are expected to treat customers and each other?
-publicly recognize employees for their contributions and high performance and never take credit him/herself?
-openly provide all company info to employees to the extent they need/desire?
-use values and high standards of them in order to explain why certain actions are better than others?
-use smiles and good humor with subordinates, not frowns or a blank face?
-generate in employees a sense of ownership? How?
Although this is an reasonably accurate test, I prefer more in depth analysis by interviewing the subordinates of the subject manager in order to assess the manager's leadership.
Peter Cook , 18 January 2008 @ 17:17 PM It's all about measurement
Hello Andrew and others,
On the one hand, I must agree that a lot of what passes for leadership development does not pass muster.
On the other hand, it comes down to ensuring there is some reasonable understanding of what is expected i.e. some meaningful measurements of how things might be better and / or different as a result of this kind of intervention.
I am minded of Charles Handy's quote of the MacNamara fallacy:
‘The first step is to measure whatever can be measured easily. This is OK as far as it goes.
The second step is to disregard that which can’t easily be measured or to give it an arbitrary quantitative value. This is artificial and misleading.
The third step is to presume that what can’t be measured easily really isn’t important. This is blindness.
The fourth step is to say that what can’t easily be measured really doesn’t exist. This is suicide.’
In other words, just because good leadership is hard to measure does not mean it is not important.
I would tend to agree with the comment that bad employee motivation may well we related to bad management. In turn bad management may be related to bad leadership.
Leadership qualities can be developed, but mostly by experience rather than knowledge inputs, so courses can be relevant, provided they are well designed. I think I'd argue that there must be some innate genetic material there as well.
Mind you, £35 mil does sound like a good programme!
John Hughes , 18 January 2008 @ 12:05 PM Human "givens"
Thanks to Nick's prompt, I've just ordered a new t-shirt with the exclamation "Maslow lives!"
I agree that this discussion has been excellent and long may this use of the forum continue. John Hughes
Nick Mitchell , 18 January 2008 @ 08:34 AM it's a matter of principle
An interesting debate. In my view, values may change, morals may change, ethics may change - all from culture to culture, generation to generation, even business to business.
What do NOT change are certain 'encoded' innate human needs - these can best be described as 'principles'. Principles are constant. They are the bedrock of all societies because their essence is coded into the DNA of all humanity (for an excellent scientific treatise on this point see 'Human Givens' by Joe Griffin and Ivan Tyrell).
These principled human needs include:
- security - attention (giving & receiving) - sense of autonomy and control - connection to others (ie communication) - affiliation to community/group - friendship, intimacy - sense of status/ importance/ personal value - sense of achievement and competence - sense of meaning and purpose
It seems to me that if this concept is accepted, the entire solution to employee engagement becomes clear - employers need to focus on addressing these principles, the 'human givens' that their people hunger for. The most important is a sense of personal value.
However, employers face a major difficulty in doing so. You can have the most enlightened employee-focused corporate culture, enshrined in excellent HR policies etc, but if the employee's line manager is unaware of their people's basic needs, is personally behaving in an inauthentic and inconsistent manner, then this will outweigh everything else. No amount of sponsored dog-walking or chair massaging will compensate.
Employers that recognise the pivotal role played by line managers will select their people-managers with great care and regard to these factors and not simply their achievement drive or functional excellence. that's the way to be a genuine 'employer of choice'.
A wellworn theme certainly, but still a major cause of 'disengagement'. As Marcus Buckingham says, 'managers trump employers'!
Bennet Simonton , 16 January 2008 @ 15:21 PM Response to Garry
Garry,
My beliefs concerning values apply only to the workplace and how people use values therein. What Bush and Blair do with values is very far beyond my narrow focus on the workplace and not something in which I have any verifiable expertise.
In addition, what is fair in a particular culture could be quite different than what a particular person considers to be "fair" in a company.
And please realize that in my approach I rely solely on what a particular person believes is "fair" treatment of him/herself, not on what the boss considers to be fair for that person or on what the boss intends to impose on that person. The definition of what is fair is relatively unimportant and fairness is always in the eye of the beholder.
What is important is that (1) the fairness of everything in the workplace be examined by each person and (2) each person's views be taken into account and discussed openly among all those affected. The goal is to arrive at a level of fairness in every policy/procedure or whatever which is very high and agreed as being such by every member of the workforce. It is in the process of attempting to arrive at high standards of fairness or honesty or quality or whatever other value that people learn (1) to use high standards of all values to control their own actions and (2) that the business is being operated in a way that they can greatly trust and respect because they shared in every outcome.
You wrote - "‘Good’ is a subjective adjective, a variable concept according to circumstances, culture and belief to name but three factors. Similarly, the idea that we all want to be treated fairly, honestly etc, is problematic as these concepts also carry different definitions according to time, place, person and situation and not necessarily the beliefs that my British or your UScentric viewpoint might attach to them."
My approach as stated above takes into account these differences and uses this diversity of opinions to arrive at the very best decisions in the workplace. Diversity is a great strength, not an impediment.
You also wrote - "Are you suggesting, as an example; that some African cultures which define the type and kind of knowledge a woman should have as compared to a man are wrong?"
I am unqualified to judge other cultures and do not do so.
You also wrote - "None of this is to say you approach is wrong Bennet, but I seriously question some of your views as I have understood them so far."
I apologize for not having been able to communicate more clearly my methods. I can say that if diligently applied they succeed without fail, in military, civilian and union environments.
A challenge that you may not agree with Bennet and I’d be interested to read your views is your concept that the definition of ‘good values’ is universal. A concept I think which your current President and our previous Prime Minister both shared. ‘Good’ is a subjective adjective, a variable concept according to circumstances, culture and belief to name but three factors. Similarly, the idea that we all want to be treated fairly, honestly etc, is problematic as these concepts also carry different definitions according to time, place, person and situation and not necessarily the beliefs that my British or your UScentric viewpoint might attach to them.
Bennet wrote: “They also all believe that knowledge is good and ignorance bad, industriousness is good and laziness bad, positive attitudes good and negative ones bad, etc, etc.”
Are you suggesting, as an example; that some African cultures which define the type and kind of knowledge a woman should have as compared to a man are wrong? Or that certain cultures with a deep religious core which carry similar edicts (which to our eyes are exceptionally harsh) are inappropriate? Is it your view that certain South American tribes whose lack of industriousness has meant they still live in the Stone Age are faulty or wrong? If you are not proposing what I am stating here then how do you explain there existence *if* we all share your fundamental ideas around what is *good* in relation to knowledge and industriousness?
Working with immigrants Bennet is questionable evidence of the transferability of your approach to other cultures. Immigrants by definition have left one culture and one state in order to move away from or head towards something they either no longer want or desire more greatly. The dynamic is not the same when we attempt to impose or use our values and definitions of appropriateness and goodness on a people who do not want it, desire it or have even considerd it, as is clearly apparent in the world today.
None of this is to say you approach is wrong Bennet, but I seriously question some of your views as I have understood them so far.
I don’t want to interrupt the focus of this thread on the real issue of Andrew’s article and it might be appropriate if you wish to continue to start another discussion under a different heading.
Bennet Simonton , 16 January 2008 @ 11:46 AM Response to Garry
Garry,
You asked - "Do you think your approach to leadership crosses cultural boundaries, values and belief systems?"
Yes, yes a thousand times yes. Yes because at a base level people are the same no matter their culture or ethnic background. By that I mean they all believe in the same good values and believe that their opposites are bad. The only difference between them is the level of importance or "value" they accord to a particular value. But those differences are of no real consequence because they all want to be treated fairly not unfairly, honestly not dishonestly, humbly not arrogantly, lovingly not hatefully, etc, etc. They also all believe that knowledge is good and ignorance bad, industriousness is good and laziness bad, positive attitudes good and negative ones bad, etc, etc.
There are differences due to culture, but these differences are easy to handle and do not change my approach.
I proved this in 10 years of civilian employ. I came out of the Navy and immediately took over a real disaster turning it into a great success in less than 2 years. Only a few of the employees were recent immigrants. I then moved to a 1300 person group in disaster state which had very large turnover and a much larger number of recent immigrants. I turned that group around in 2 years and continued to improve it over the next 5 years. In the first 4 years, productivity per person across the group increased by over 300%.
You also asked - "What is your take on the leadership and management challenges in the UK?"
I have not worked in the UK and thus have no direct knowledge. I have corresponded extensively with a UK consultant who shares my beliefs as concerns how one creates significant improvements in employee performance. He indicates that the UK suffers from the same malady as exists in the U.S., that being our top-down command and control approach to managing people. That approach demeans, disrespects, and demotivates employees literally forcing performance to a low level.
Paul Sinclair , 16 January 2008 @ 11:16 AM Listening to the "Workers"
Andrew, thanks for some excellent points..... I have always felt that many management/leadership issues can be solved... if we listened more closley to those being managed/led.
“We have to get everybody in the organization involved. If we do that, the best ideas rise to the top.” Jack Welch, ex CEO, GE
Most managers I have coached have "problems with their staff or their own managers"
I believe the "workers" can help managers become more effective, happy and successful.
And on Leadership, Ghandi said: "Great Leaders make Small People feel Great!"
"Engagement & Commitment" is certainly a subject all companies should act on.
All this seems to be Common Sense to me..shame it isn't always that common!
John Hughes , 16 January 2008 @ 11:07 AM You say Aggressiveand I say assertive ...
I'm sure Ben meant ASSERTIVE, although my knowledge of the US Navy is confined to the John Wayne approach to patrolling the Seven Seas! John Hughes
Garry Platt , 16 January 2008 @ 09:04 AM Grasp?
Bennet - I have reviewed your profile on your web site and your experience appears to be predominantly U.S. Navy based (25 years) with some management experience in a utility environment after retiring from the service.
Do you think your approach to leadership crosses cultural boundaries, values and belief systems?
What is your take on the leadership and management challenges in the UK?
"My main issue with purveyors of both management and leadership development of late is the claim that anyone can learn to be a great manager or leader. I couldn't disagree more."
And "Management and Leadership researchers should move away for trying to find the holy grail of trainable management and leadership skills."
And "What you're looking for are those intelligences that cannot be trained, cannot be learned from a book: innate people skills that I'm afraid not everyone possesses."
It stands to reason that anyone who is unwilling to devote considerable time and effort in learning how to manage/lead people will never become successful.
But I disagree about not searching for the holy grail because it exists and has been used many times in the past in such places as constructing the Panama Canal. It has not been written down in detail by many people, I being one of those people, but it has been written down.
So I disagree that the only solution is to use people who have innate people skills. In fact, there is nothing wrong with training a person who does not have them but has great aggressiveness and drive since I have found these to be relatively easy to develop into exceptional managers of people so long as the trainer has a comprehensive, coherent script of whats, whys and how tos.
John Hughes , 15 January 2008 @ 16:54 PM I didn't get where I am today Part 2
"Putting to one side their technical or specialist skills, have they got what it takes to be a good manager and leader of people?", says Tony Nichols
Having "what it takes" is the key question and "looking for those intelligences that cannot be trained, cannot be learned from a book" is a tough assessment challenge for anyone trying to identify "innate people skills ".
I know what Tony means in an intuitive management sense but am unsure how I would put that into acceptable recruitment and selection practice.
I applaud hunches and other leaps of faith, having used them myself at the end of an interviewing session. But it's always difficult to convince HR colleagues that such intuition is objective! John Hughes
Tony Nicholls , 15 January 2008 @ 14:43 PM I didn't get where I am today...
...without a lot of good quality development in basic management techniques. I can still vividly remember many one-on-one tips and hints offered by colleagues, the more formal training courses and the school-of-hard-knocks lessons learned as I climbed the management ladder.
I agree with Andrew that basic management training and mentoring is a must for effective and efficient management in any organisation. I would add that leadership is also important and that some aspects of leadership effectiveness can be trained.
My main issue with purveyors of both management and leadership development of late is the claim that anyone can learn to be a great manager or leader. I couldn't disagree more. I've developed a handful of successful managers and leaders over my career but have suggested to many others hoping to follow in their footsteps that a specialist role not involving the management or leadership of others might be a more rewarding career path.
Management and Leadership researchers should move away for trying to find the holy grail of trainable management and leadership skills. instead we should focus, as Andrew suggests, on training what we already know to be the basics of good quality management and then apply some common sense to the choosing and promotion of our people managers and leaders by asking a question: Putting to one side their technical or specialist skills, have they got what it takes to be a good manager and leader of people? If not, don't give them the job. If you're not sure, create an opportunity for them to lead a team on a trial basis so you can assess them. If it doesn't work, move them out of the role quickly. What you're looking for are those intelligences that cannot be trained, cannot be learned from a book: innate people skills that I'm afraid not everyone possesses.
Let's teach the basics of good management practice that are useful for all employees. Let's also stop promoting employees to people-management and leadership roles when they don't have the innate talents to make it a success. Tony Nicholls
Mike Morrison , 15 January 2008 @ 08:14 AM Is leader-ship sunk?
Great article
We need to get away from the fads and fashions and first of all ensure the basics are there - to run the organisation effectively and efficiently. Delivering the goals of the shareholders.
Ray says "Leadership does make a difference-it's just that culture typically trumps training,"
Exactly - the training needs to be identified effectively and owned as well as driven from the very top - culture will always win out. So make culture change the goal!
360 degree feedback As for not using 360's - I think they have a place - but not the universal tool many first thought. One of the problems with 360's are that anyone can design one. Most in use on leadership programs are ill conceived and lack rigger and research. I also think that the way they are often used is inappropriate - more a leaders heal thy self approach.
Back to Basics Andrew as for your comments about 'back to basics' yes I agree. Back in 1998 I wrote an article about this and the successes we had on academic based programmes - requiring managers to start at a lower level qualification than they were entitles to. Subsequently this has had a dramatic result of all of the original 10 participants now being senior managers in the business (or others) those that took the traditional route have barely developed in comparison (http://www.emeraldinsight.com )
As consultants and developers it is our role to help educate clients not to do the 'sexy' 'new' stuff but to focus on the basics for effective business improvement.
This may be difficult if you think your proposal will not be accepted as being 'too bland' compared to others the client has received.
ray glab , 14 January 2008 @ 19:51 PM Leadreship Training-How to!
I am convinced that Leadership does make a difference-it's just that culture typically trumps training, and connecting to the right kind of leadership training is important. Loook at DDI's and ther Hay Group's research into this. Also, Sutton anf Pfeffer's book-"The knowing doing gap" will shed light on the way to go about leadership training. It's a one shot class, or a web based workshop. Picking the right folks for this training (Pareto principle) and focus your attention on the 20% ray glab
John Hughes , 14 January 2008 @ 19:37 PM Leadership & management
I can't argue with the main article, nor with the responses.
I especially agree that poor leadership encourages poor management.
My only concern, as a former local government employee, is that the public sector is almost always singled out for negative examples. Inevitable, I suppose, because poor decisions tend to be transparent and good decisions unnoticed, especially by the media.
What's often missed is the fact that budgetary control, the inhibiting factor for long term planning in the public sector, is less constrained in the private sector where profits can self-generate expansion and risk-taking initiatives. Success breeding success I admit.
Successful adminisation in the public sector tends to encourage cutbacks!
After 42 years spent in local government, I'm still convinced that the social impact of the services it delivers are constantly taken for granted by the majority of its financial supporters, i.e local tax payers. John Hughes
Bennet Simonton , 14 January 2008 @ 16:01 PM Leadership Not Understood
Good article and quite right.
But the problem is that we don't understand leadership or how to do it and thus can't possibly improve workforce performance by establishing leadership programs. But we still need good leadership since most employees follow whatever leadership exists, good or bad because that is their nature.
I managed people for over 30 years. In the first 12, I used the conventional top-down command and control model. Then I had a revelation that my subordinates were far more important than I since they did all the work.
So I started listening to them. I learned that they had a lot of complaints, questions and suggestions. The more I addressed these in a respectful and timely fashion, the better they performed. In fact, average performance doubled.
In listening to my people, I had a second revelation - that all people could be self-motivated self-starters whose performance would always meet very high standards. This meant that I had to convert the 95% who were not self-motivated. After some time, I was successful in converting about 80% of them, the result being that average performance doubled again.
In the process of all this, I produced a comprehensive, coherent set of whats, whys and how tos which could be learned and used by anyone. I needed these in order to train subordinate managers and supervisors since without their help I could not turnaround any sizable organization. With their help, I turned around four management disasters including a nuclear-powered cruiser and 1300 person unionized group in New York City.
My own conclusion was that managing people is all about leadership, leading employees how to treat their work, treat customers and treat each other by how the boss treats employees. Treating employees with great respect and deference in a timely fashion causes them to do the same to their work, their customers and each other.
So our current day problems are that in failing to understand leadership or followers we lead them in the wrong direction using a top-down command and control model that demeans, disrespects and demotivates employees. Most employees are followers and they will follow excellent, bad or mediocre leadership from their leaders whether their leaders want them to do so or not. It is a natural law.
Peter Jackson , 14 January 2008 @ 15:58 PM Interesting ... and ...
An interesting piece. Thank you. I can't disagree with the findings here, nor those of Paul Kearns referred to in the article, but I think it points to an issue that is wider than leadership vs management.
I was struck by the question: "Why do public services often work so badly?"
Sure, things go wrong, and when you look at individual incidents, it seems that the most obvious chain of events point towards how well people have actually done their job (or have been managed doing their job). But does that mean that a focus on skills will improve our lives?
It feels to me that many managers have so much to attend to, that the performance pressures are so high, that they are constantly on the edge of a chaotic state. They don't have tinme to do everything right. Let's face it, we benefit from this - especially in the commercial sector. Standards of living and life expectancy are higher that ever in this country. we routinely enjoy products and services unimaginable 20 years ago. In relation to performance, something, somewhere is actually working. And our expectations rise accordingly.
Management in public services has 'learnt' from the private sector. Learnt to get more out of less, to improve service levels, to cope with more complexity. And we've learnt to expect more. But where in the private sector, competition manages the risk, in the public sector the risk 'bounces back' onto the community.
When do we reach a point where less is more? Peter Jackson
Martin Schmalenbach , 14 January 2008 @ 14:54 PM Do we have poor management because of poor leadership?
Thank you Andrew for a stimulating perspective.
It got me wondering...
Do we have poor management because of poor leadership?!
I have a view, and I wonder what others think in the context of the articles from both Andrew and Paul?
Bob Selden , 14 January 2008 @ 14:39 PM If the cap (manager's) fits, wear it!
Andrew,
Many thanks for your erudite article - well said.
I have been writing about management v's leadership for many years now and it's great to hear someone speak some common sense.
As part of my consultancy work, I often get to run focus groups with managers. Three questions I ask: 1. Why did you join (this organisation)? 2. Why do you stay? 3. Why would you leave?
The answer to 3 is always "poor management".
A further point that I have found, is that organisations seem to spend most of their management development budget at the top end (particularly leadership programs) and the new manager misses out. Whereas. he/she is the most motivated and most in need of basic "how to" training.
Paul Kearns , 14 January 2008 @ 12:36 PM Amen to that Andrew
At last, a mature, informed and widely experienced view of what's really going on in the world of 'leadership' development (sic) rather than the rose-tinted (but myopic)view that leadership providers and academics would have us believe. Well done Andrew - you have elevated us all to an adult level of debate, and about time too!
Is it time to shelve the 360 degree evaluations and get back to basics, asks Andrew Mayo?
