Monday Morning Leadership

Monday Morning Leadership

I am currently reading Monday morning leadership by David Cottrell . Its a thin 100 page book but the book is a must read for everyone.It has something to learn for to be and current leaders . Lot of things mentioned in the book - most of us would be knowing or doing but when it is written somewhere and you read it in a book - you start thinking.

Besides , I will start trying and putting up some of my practical experiences to it so that I can relate it to in a better way.

Session I: 
Be a driver - As a leader we need to understand the difference between a driver and passenger . This is very true in all situations. Just like the driver looses some of the freedom , a leader should understand that he does not have all those freedom as other employees have . And just like a driver he must understand that the whole team is his responsibility.

Personal Exp:This reminds me of a friend who just moved into our team recently.With this move he was expected to gradually grow into a leadership role. Besides his experience was much more than his team members which makes it obvious for others to accept him to take this role.But personally I felt he never realized this himself and never changed from the passenger to driver role. As a team member, he continued to get into chit chats which always involved scolding the management for everything that happened to him.In this new role,he continued to do so which definitely undermined the way the team looked at him and was  demotivating factor for the team.In a short time ,it was realized that he was not ready to be a driver yet.

These transitions are very tricky from an employee to a leadership role.The leadership looks at you a prospective leader but you are still part of the team as a employee.Every employee gradually growing in a organization grows through this.In such a case, you walk a very thin line between a employee and a leader.You need to always remember that although you are part of the team,you have lost some of the freedom they have as a prospective leader.

Take Responsibility -Personally and also as a leader we need to learn to take responsibility of anything that happens around us. There is no point blaming anyone for anything but its more important to take responsibility of it and then look towards the future how to deal with it.As Jeff puts it by taking responsibility we look to the future but by blaming someone we are looking at the past.

This is something that is generally pushed or should be pushed in all organization. If someone commits a mistake , never look at who committed but but try looking at how the same mistake can be prevented in future.

Talking of responsibility , it is worth mentioning here - while we take responsibility of the event ,it is also very important how we react to the event. That would decide the outcome of the event and many other events that get tied up to it.

Personal Exp:

Session II:

a) Know your main things:

                        It is very important that the whole team knows the main things that they want to achieve. That provides focus to the team and a sense of direction to what they are doing. And a focused team often provides better results.

 

So as a leader it is very important that the leader knows what the main things are and communicates them clearly to the team that these are he priorities that he wants the team to focus on.

 

Never assume that the team knows what the main things are. So it is worthwhile to ask the whole team what they think the main things are. Don’t be surprised if you get answers different from what you thought.

b) Setting up the main things:

                        These are typically my thoughts on how these should be set.

a)      They should be drilled from the top business level.

b)      They should not be things that can be achieved in a fortnight or a couple of months in a process oriented business. Once achieved that leaves the team distraught on what should be their next focus area. Besides if the leader does not communicate what next pretty quickly, the team slowly losses focus and just drift without purpose.

c)      The main things should be aligned to every individual’s goals and objectives against which they are appraised at the end of the year. So every individual knows what he is doing will benefit his growth in the organization.

c) People quit people before they quit the company

                         This is something I really liked and the more I think, the more I think that it is true.

            Most employees look at their manager to meet their needs and if the manager is not able to do so, then gradually they become frustrated about it and start scolding the manager and link everything happening in his office life to that frustration. So even very small things add to that frustration and with frustration, everything seems to look bad and immediately the other side of the garden looks much greener. One of the things that every manager should do is to get in touch unofficially with people who have left and try to understand what made him to leave. What went wrong which made him to look outside.

            Of-course there are lot of other reasons why people leave but the above reason definitely would rank very high on the list and other reasons would drill down from the top one.

Session-III

a) Get in touch with people:

                  This is very true for everyone managing any team. The manager should coach or mentor all his employees.He should provide feedback to both his superstars,middlestarts and underperformers.Gennerally it so happens that we do not provide feedback to superstars assuming that they are doing good and they don't need any feedback . What it gradually happens is that the superstars start feeling that there manager does not care about them and does not meet their needs.

 

And since they are his responsibility , so they have full rights over part of his time . So a leader should always listen to them and be open and flexible enough so that they are ready to talk with him.

 

b) Hire the best and dehire the underperformers

                All the management gurus have stuck to this and no one would deny it.Never lower the bar to hire someone just for the sake of hiring.Set a standard and then stick to that . When we lower the standard during hiring, we are basically lowering the standard of the team.A less competent person , obviously puts extra load on the rest of the team as the team balance gets disturbed.So what it ends up in is that the good competent employees end up doing more where to make up for the less competent employee.

 

Now if we do not dehire the less competent employee for affecting the balance and for doing less, by giving them decent performance appraisals, we are basically awarding them for doing less work.So this in short is doing unjustice to others who have put extra effort. So gradually more and more people enter this band where people are rewarded for doing less work and it destroys the team.