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Bullying and leadership styles

Bullying in the workplace is a real and present problem in almost every sector. It causes poor productivity and, if widespread in an organisation, can lead to an impact on the company’s profits, as well as the mental wellbeing of those who work there and their peers. A study from xxxxxxx University in the United States has shown that bullying is linked to leadership style.

Business leaders’ personal values, organisational culture and market orientation

A new study examining the connections between the market orientation and culture of an organisation and the leaders’ personal values has just been published in the Journal of xxxxxxxxxx. The study found that the personal values of the leaders of an organisation significantly impact both the organisational culture and its market orientation.

Gender and leadership – it’s all about distance

New research looking at leadership may give an answer to the song of a man and woman bickering ‘Anything you can do’ (Howard Keel and Betty Hutton) – women it appears are better at team leadership than men. The research looked at the perceptual distance in managers’ conflict avoidance behaviour and its consequences for subordinates.

How leaders lead organisational learning

New research has shown the processes by which transactional and transformational leadership tends to develop learning capability in organisations and it may not be entirely what you expect. The study by researchers from xxxxxx University discovered that leaders tend to use a series of different processes, depending on their type of leadership, and that these processes have a direct impact on organisational learning....

Control vs resources: how stepping aside early may benefit your startup…

Looking at the two consumer electronics behemoths Apple and Microsoft one may be led to believe that having the visionary who founded the business at the tiller while it goes from a garage based business to a multibillion dollar company is essential. But this is far from it...

How our mood (and productivity) is directly affected by different forms of communication at work

A team of computer scientists have used technology to anonymously measure the psychological states of a group of workers at an IT company in Italy to see how the multiple channels of communication, email, text, documents, chats, face-to-face interactions etc. affect them. This study can be used to better help Human Resources professionals in designing job descriptions and may even inform how certain people can work better according to their dispositions.

Leadership begins at home

For a leader to develop others’ potential, they must develop their own first, according to Ian Cunningham, Chairman of Strategic Developments International. Writing in Development and Learning in Organizations: An International Journal, Cunningham shows how taught leadership training can actually have a negative impact on leadership qualities (if it has any impact at all).

Leadership Development: the role of emerging identity as a leader

A new paper just published in the Journal Advances in Developing Human Resources has highlighted one of the current areas of focus of leadership development. The development of leader identity.

The effects of leadership training on organisational learning

Effective leadership can improve organisational learning and help drive the organisation in new directions. Organisational learning as a concept is the process of creating, retaining and transferring knowledge within the organisation. The primary purpose being to prevent organisations from losing what they learn from experience over time.

The importance of dignity in leadership

An interesting case study by international conflict resolution expert, Donna Hicks, has just been published showing how a major US corporation failed because the senior leadership failed to give their employees the dignity they deserved.

The new leadership - organisation use of self

A new paradigm of leadership is starting to emerge from the post 2008 financial crash world. Traditional concepts are starting to shift and a new world idea of leadership is just starting to emerge. In the journal Leader to Leader, Mila Baker, a New York based author and consultant, argues what the new paradigm appears to look like.

The 9 evidence based issues about shared leadership that you need to know

A meta-analysis of 72 research papers just published has thrown up nine points for human resources and development professionals to consider when looking at a shared leadership system. The paper looked at shared leadership at a team level rather than the macro organisational level.

Transformational leadership can tackle employee turnover

New research just published in the International Journal of Manpower looked at IT engineer turnover in small and medium enterprises and has shown that there is a solution to high turnover in highly skilled areas, however it requires a few steps back from the problem itself.

What creates the conditions for successful shared leadership?

Shared leadership is increasingly being used in certain sectors. Broadly speaking, this is where the team is jointly responsible for a task and no one person is responsible for the successes or failures of the team. Research into shared leadership has now shown that there are a number of components that help with the formation of shared leadership.

What do CEOs really learn when undercover on frontline roles?

Following the TV series Undercover Boss, researchers spoke to 13 Chief Executives (CEOs) to find out what they really learned from going undercover on the frontline of their own businesses. This differs somewhat to that which was presented on the TV series – which only focused on the human side, whereas the research focused on the impressions given to the CEOs from their businesses’ point of view.

What kind of leader do we want? Well it depends…

Research just published in The Leadership Quarterly looking at how we decide whether to approve of a leader or not has come up with some interesting results. It is often assumed that endorsement of a leader depends on personal preference and mutual ‘fit’ of style. This study suggests otherwise.

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Authentic Leadership and Being Authentic – What does that mean anyway?

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Being authentic

The leadership, management and personal development literature and lore is repleat with appeals and even demands for authenticity. Management and leadership courses, consultants and coaches extol the virtues of how to be authentic and genuine. It sounds good but what are we really asking for here? What do we actually mean by being authentic?

Earlier this week I was having a conversation with a colleague about what authentic actually means and what it entails.

The dictionary usually cites synonyms like being genuine, of thy true self or something similar.

Is Donald Trump being authentic?

But what if thy true self is a liar and a skank?

What if I am at heart just a cheat and a thief?

Do you think Donald Trump isn’t being authentic or true to himself for example?

Given that it has been shown that there are a greater preponderance of narcissism and psychopathic tendencies in corporate leadership positions compared the rest of organisational populations (1), do you really want these people to be authentic?

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Be true to thy self – really?

And if I am to be extolled to be my true self, what is that anyway?

Who am I and come to that who are you?

I mean not your name or a role like mother, father, manager etc but who are you really?

I can convince myself that I am a beautiful soul who comes from a place of kindness and awareness, until that is, someone pisses me off. Then what? If I shout and swear at the driver that just cut in front of me am I being genuine and authentic? Is that who I am?

Who am I?

There appears to be the idea that we can actually get to who we are really, that there is some little us inside that is honourable, benevolent, and stable. A real us that is is readily discernible and describable.

This as opposed to something that actually appears to be infinitely complex, complicated, often confused, eminently contradictory and forever changing. How do you actually describe something that is shifting, morphing and changeable? (Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle).

Maybe being authentic means just that, changeable, given to whim and contradictory. I am not sure that’s what people have in mind when they think of authentic.

Because if I am to be authentic to the latter, I am not sure that is much of a recipe for a great leader, parent or much else actually.

What if I am damaged?

This of course is a question that is as old as the history of humans, and certainly the ancient Greeks promoted the philosophy of ‘being true to oneself’ (2). However, what, if at base, I am an insecure and damaged individual? Should I then be true to myself? Additionally if I act in accordance to who I am and it is at the expense of others, is that okay?

What if I want that beautiful person; is it being authentic to kidnap them and keep them for myself and my own pleasure?

Assumptions

There appears to be an assumption with the idea of being authentic, that at heart, every human being:

Is benevolent
Can readily access who they are
Can describe who they are
That who they are is stable, and
Predicable

Are these assumptions true? For all of us?

You see I am not too sure that when people extoll the virtues of being authentic or being an authentic leader, they have actually thought it through.

Is just being better enough?

Rather, and I think a more useful construct not just for leaders, but for anyone is to learn to be a better person.

However,this, I think is a little too general. Because without a plan, being a better person is somewhat aimless. Where do you start? What do you focus on?

The process of improvement, being a better person is a process that is:

Incremental
Continual
Conscious
Habituated- challenging, developing and redeveloping habits
Action oriented- it’s what you do, not what you intend, and
Learning oriented

Ok maybe a different being authentic then

There is however, one use of the word authentic that may be more useful in the context – the quality of being trustworthy. So rather than being like who we really are, it appears we often use the term authentic to mean being true or trustworthy to others (and ourselves). So what does this mean?

Firstly it means being truthful with yourself.

But what does that mean?

It probably means understanding your own emotions, beliefs, biases, shortcomings, mistakes, humanity, strengths and being accurate and honest with these. Ahhh maybe now we are getting closer to understanding what being authentic is. It is a bit more than just being trustworthy and honest.

Being authentic with yourself is often not easy. We often don’t want to face what we are like, how we behave and why we behave and think like we do. We often don’t take the time to explore and think about what we are really like. Notice I am not saying “who we are”.

Hmm this is looking a lot like learning to be better person….

Maybe that’s what we mean by ‘authentic’

Maybe what we actually mean by authentic and genuine is someone who is conscious, understands their own values and biases, is striving to be a better person, is humble (an interesting value), is thoughtful, honest (but in the way we want them to be honest), is pro societal in that they are there for the good of humanity and wider considerations like the planet, is coherent, is changing but not too fast and that the change is ‘good’ change, and that they are open about this, and that they understand the effect and impact they are having, and have empathy ….

That’s a lot of stuff for one word to mean.

Just a thought.

References

(1) Gudmundsson, A., & Southey, G. (2011). Leadership and the rise of the corporate psychopath: What can business schools do about the ‘snakes inside’?. E-Journal of Social & Behavioural Research in Business, 2(2), 18-27.

(2) Harter, S. 2002. Authenticity. In C. R. Snyder & S. J. Lopez (Eds.), Handbook of positive psychology:382-394. London: Oxford University Press.

How to know that someone is going to act unethically

Blog Leadership Learning

The 7 forms of organisational learning and why getting leaders onboard is important

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Why getting leaders up to speed with the 7 forms of organisational learning will help your organisation.

Organisational learning as a concept is the process of creating, retaining and transferring knowledge within the organisation. In this article I look at a new study about the effects of training leaders in the 7 forms of organisational learning.

The primary purpose of organisational learning being to prevent organisations from losing what they learn from experience over time.

There are 4 levels of organisational learning or knowledge creation within organisations:

Individual,
Group or team,
Organisational, and
Inter-organisational levels

In the modern knowledge based economy, organisational learning can create a real competitive advantage for almost all organisations. In essence it is the cumulation of the knowledge generated within the organisation and is vital know-how for any organisation. Often however this organisational learning is not given the primacy it’s importance deserves.

An interesting piece of research has just been published that shows how leadership training can influence the 7 forms of organisational learning and provide big gains for any organisation:

The 7 forms of organisational learning

Individual learning – this is the learning everyone undergoes, either through experience or through formal training etc.
Dialogue and inquiry learning. This can either be formally set up as a series of inquiry learning tasks or the learning that occurs through normal dialogue and conversations.
Team learning – this is both the formal or informal learning that teams undergo as a team.
Continuous learning – this refers to the programmes and development opportunities the organisation provides .
Learning through empowerment – this refers to the learning people and teams accrue when they are given more authority and responsibility.
Embedded Systems learning that promote learning and the capture of organisational learning – this refers to the learning gained directly from organisational systems. These can include Management information systems, Learning Management Systems, operational and process systems, work flow systems etc.
Learning from the leadership both directly and indirectly from their behaviours and actions. Leaders and managers as role models.

The study

The researchers provided a development programme for leaders, which helped the leaders to understand the 7 forms of organisational learning and facilitated them to find ways to improve the organisational learning using this knowledge.

The researchers then collected stories from across the organisations both before the event and afterwards to try to discern what changes had occurred in organisational learning as a result of the programme with the leaders.

Findings

It was found that three of the seven types of organisational learning were positively impacted by leadership development programme.

The researchers found that Continuous Learning improved significantly after the training in that the organisations had a wider range of learning opportunities and many in the organisations felt they were better. This may well have been because the leaders were now more cognisant of learning as function of the organisation.
Interestingly, the leaders themselves didn’t think that there was any development or improvement in Empowerment based or Embedded Systems learning. However the employees did believe that these had got much better and that they were learning more from these sources after the leaders had completed the development programme.

However, in terms of the team and individual forms of learning, neither the employees nor the leaders thought there had been any improvements as a result of the programme.

The researchers suggest that “evaluations of leadership training programs should examine changes in organizational learning from several stakeholders.” Where perceptions differ as to the outcomes of a programme focused on changing the organisation as a whole, samples of all stakeholders should be consulted to assess whether there have been changes at all.

Additionally where any leadership or management development work is ongoing, their staff should be consulted as to the effects of this development.

Editor’s Comment

Whilst the study itself is interesting, efforts to increase organisational learning across the 7 forms are comparatively rare. Often ‘Organisational Learning’ falls into the gaps between the leadership, management, HR and L&D/OD functions and rarely does anyone have direct responsibility for organisational learning as a strategy for developing a competitive advantage, Further developing a systemic and strategic approach to the accumulation, retention and access to and deliverance of learning and experience across an organisation is often either assigned to a system/IT services or is an afterthought. Additionally, it is important that organisations go further than folders full of Standard operating procedures. Stories for example are a vital source of learning.

The 7 Dimensions of Organisational Learning on their own are a useful starting point.

Reference – available to members – If you would like to get hold of the full research briefing including references and useful resources CLICK HERE – it’s free!

Why you really need to align your learning and knowledge management

Blog Human Resources Leadership Organisational Development Research

How to make shared leadership work: The 4 conditions needed – new research

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Shared leadership is increasingly being used in more and more sectors. Broadly speaking, shared leadership is where the team is jointly responsible for a task and no one person is responsible for the successes or failures of the team. In other words, it is where leadership is broadly distributed, such that people within a team and organisation lead each other.

Research into shared leadership has now shown that there are four components that help with the formation of shared leadership:

The internal team environment
Task cohesion
Shared leadership principles
Task satisfaction

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1. Internal team environment

Previous research has revealed that shared leadership is enabled by an overall team environment comprised of

Shared purpose
Social support, and
Voice

This internal team environment fosters team members’ willingness to offer leadership influence as well as relying on the leadership of other team members.

Shared Purpose

Shared purpose is where team members have similar understandings of their main team objectives and focus on the accomplishment of the collective goals.

Social support

Social support is where the team dynamic allows people to give each other support within the team, perhaps helping one another out as the task gets particularly difficult.

Voice

Voice is defined as the level of internal communication throughout the task. Voice is a feeling that you can speak up when you need to and that challenge is valued.

2. Task cohesion

A team doesn’t have to gel well to get a job done. Everyone has probably been in situations in their work life where they wouldn’t go to the pub with someone but they would ‘sail through the Gates of Hell’ with them as they were considered to be good at their job. Task cohesion is a group’s shared attraction and commitment to the group goal. A significant number of studies suggest task cohesion is more closely related to work performance than interpersonal cohesion.

3. Shared leadership principles

Shared leadership is about the team conducting themselves with no one person being tasked with coordinating and leading it. Everyone takes their responsibility for their element of the task and jointly for the task as a whole.

Another study defined shared leadership as ‘a dynamic, interactive influence process among individuals in groups for which the objective is to lead one another to the achievement of group or organisational goals or both’. It is, in essence, the collaboration of professionals each taking responsibility.

4. Task satisfaction

Task satisfaction is essentially the group’s perception of the completion of the task in much the same way as individuals perceive their jobs through job satisfaction. Task satisfaction is a group-level counterpart of individual job satisfaction and previous studies have defined it ‘as a group’s shared attitude toward both its task and the associated work environment.’

The paper, published in The Leadership Quarterly, found that when dealing with creative tasks the internal team environment and task cohesion predicts and tends to lead to shared leadership which, in turn, determines task satisfaction.

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