As within, so without

Many well-intentioned managers who aspire to guide and develop others haven't learned how to manage and develop themselves. They try to build organisations and teams or provide service qualities that differ from their own attributes. It doesn't work.

Two years ago Laurie took the helm of a new, mid-sized organisation dedicated to radical innovation in its field. At start-up, the high-profile enterprise attracted some of the most talented people in the business. Managers and staff were totally dedicated and delighted to be "walking" what was usually only talked about. A successful audit 12 months on, validated the risks they'd taken and the distance travelled. Clients were ecstatic about the close connections they saw between philosophy and delivery. The industry was abuzz. But 10 months ago, cracks began appearing in the culture.

Cracks - and gaps

Now, Laurie's managers are burning out. Sub-groups are in covert conflict with one another. Decision-making is bogged-down. Key people cautiously check out jobs elsewhere. They fear giving feedback to one another and suspect there's an "in-group" (who support Laurie) and others who work against him. No longer trusting their own judgements they take almost every decision to Laurie for final approval. There is high anxiety amongst staff about upsetting him with any "bad news". Laurie's aversion to negative feedback has whittled away openness and trust. The organisation is adopting a more conventional approach to its business and governance. Clients are moving elsewhere.

Laurie hasn't been able to demonstrate in his own behaviours, what he wants in others. His open-door policy doesn't extend to any suggestion of criticism of his intentions, practices or style. He doesn't trust; tries to know about and influence everything; seems unable to ask for help and resists offers of support. He makes decisions that affect his managers without consulting them first. His preaching of consensus has been at odds with sub-agenda some interpret as meaning "agree with my way". Coping, for Laurie, has involved 12-14 hour days, six to seven days a week, including most vacations. He is exhausted and irritable.

You can't teach or lead others to do something that's essentially out of alignment with your own habits, skills, management practices and characteristics. I quickly learned this when I began teaching people-management skills 20 years: no matter what I said, most learning came about from what I did. Early on in my career it was alarming to realise how much my personal modeling was the product: I had to demonstrate a constant congruence between my words and actions.

Contradictions and disconnections

Once, in Melbourne, my taxi-driver had just attended a lecture on motivation theory. We broke into hilarious laughter about how de-motivating that was, and about other disconnected or contradictory events we'd experienced:

• A Quality Improvement conference where speakers had no arrangements (and didn't want) to receive feedback on presentations about the importance of measuring customers' perception of quality
  


• A workshop on How Adults Learn (from action, involvement and practice, not from listening) delivered entirely in lecture format
  


• Someone who once told my driver, "The trouble with you is you're too judgmental!"
  


• A Chief Executive who, when introducing me to a group of his managers I was about to work with on "Managing Effective Relationships", announced "You'll have your work cut out with this lot, Tom. They're absolutely bloody hopeless!"
  

By the time we reached Tulamarine Airport, we were in tears of laughter.

Disconnections and contradictions

Not all contradictions and disconnections are as blatant, but eventually most people spot the phoniness of them. If they can't clarify it exactly, at some level they are disconcerted and feel edgy. There's a common aversion to being urged towards behaviours that those doing the urging are unable to demonstrate. Modelling, said Albert Schweitzer, is not the main thing in influencing others; it is everything!

My pet aversion is managers who preach the importance of measuring customer or client satisfaction levels as a basis of improving quality but won't treat their staff, (the prime customers of their leadership, facilitation, decision-making, problem-solving and people-management practices), the same way. "Ask them to measure my performance?" one manager gasped at me: "What are you nuts?! Who'd want to open that can of worms?"

Very many people who attend training programmes in people-management practices complain that their managers should attend but won't. They know how difficult it will be to make personal improvements under the guidance of managers who demonstrate little value in doing the same themselves.

Jim Clemmer, (transformation thinker and writer) lists these examples of all too common disconnects between organisation and personal performance:

• Managers with stunted personal growth set strategies to build a "learning organisation".
  


• Managers produce team and organization vision, values, and mission statements without having clarified and aligned their own personal preferred future, principles, and purpose.
  


• Programmes to improve customer service are initiated by managers who boss, direct, and control rather than serve their organisation's servers.
  


• Continuous quality improvement programs are implemented by managers with weak levels of continuous personal improvement.
  


• Management groups comprised of turf-protecting departmental managers who fight like three kids in the back seat on a long hot drive, try to build a team-based organisation.
  


• Disorganised managers with poor time management habits set goals, priorities, and disciplined processes for everyone else.
  


• Although they have no personal improvement plan, process, or habits, managers develop extensive organisation transformation and improvement plans.
  


• While avoiding (and shooting messengers of) personal feedback, managers construct extensive performance appraisal systems and measurements for everyone else.

So, is perfection required?

As a manager your good, bad or indifferent behaviours set the standards and reference-points. The negative influences of unhelpful modelling compound.

You don't have to a perfect role model. But if you want credibility and committed followers, those you manage or lead must see a clear connection between who you are and the direction you're pointing them towards. At very least they need to see that you are committed to closing the organisation-personal (ideal-reality) performance gap by working hard on your shortcomings. Otherwise they'll shrug off all your planning and improvement talk as "flavour of the month" and opt for the status quo.

Leadership begins with giving leadership over yourself and what you claim to value. Successful team or organisation management begins with competent self-management. The first step in improving your team, organisation or quality of your services, is improving yourself.

Where do you need to start?

How do you know?

© Copyright 2002 - 2007 Tom Watkins Group. All rights reserved.

Select and contact a Mentor if you'd like to discuss these ideas or want support to make progress with your own issues.

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