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Challenges to Leadership |
Emerging Threats
Internal team leaders - those rising stars. Not a bad thing, the best leaders focus on developing emerging leaders, not to create followers, but to create more leaders. Challenges to authority can and do occur - second-guessing your decisions, creating a deliberate and subversive environment across their team peers in an attempt to conduct an internal coup d’etat. The unsanctioned bid to undermine leadership occurs across the workplace, with many areas becoming accustomed to seeing it as business as usual. The defining element that sets successful leaders and cohesive teams is how these attempts are dealt with.
So how do we react?
Organisational psychology theory will tell us that these people may feel undervalued, under-utilised or underwhelmed with their routine work; it may say that they may have difficulties aligning to the organisational culture, but critically, and the most important - they are not empowered in their duties.
So how do we empower?
Understanding the four dimensions of psychological empowerment in work, consisting of meaning, impact, self-determination and competence, is critical to understanding the application of supportive techniques to influence and determine a successful outcome. We know that empowerment is a motivational process that enhances self-efficacy, but many leaders struggle to deal with how to continue the process to fulfilment. Research tells us that trust is the primary driver to empowerment, achieved through leader approachability, team effectiveness and team value. As these increase, the more empowered each team member will become. Following trust formation, a sense of pride is created, and confident communication is developed. Overlaying this confident communication on the empowerment dimensions we discussed earlier, competence and self-determination are directly improved, creating an increased openness to experience. Fulfilling the empowerment cycle requires the developed openness to experience to be completed - attempts to solve more complex problems or refine process and procedure by applying innovation are two examples. This concept has a direct correlation between empowerment and career satisfaction. If your rising stars witness a tangible impact on influencing work outcomes from their efforts, they create new meaning. As their leader, this will enable you to develop their transformational and cognitive logic, removing the subversive and often toxic atmosphere that surrounds disenfranchised staff.
Broader Threat Environment
The broader threat environment consists of all threats to a leader’s authority and credibility from external sources. Intrusive leadership (of which there is a separate Insight article) can deliver positive outcomes despite the negative semantic association. Attempts to rebrand as involved leadership detract from the concept of leadership failure within a team. Stack ranking or a vitality curve is a management practice that rates team members against their peers. Within the commonly accepted Welch definition (20-70-10), the top 20% of team members are the most productive, described as charismatic, passionate, influential and consistently delivering results. The middle 70% are those who perform adequately, enabling critical business activities to continue - after all, if your dropped 70% of your team, your global productivity would decrease. The outliers, the bottom 10%, are defined as underachievers, those who fail to deliver and those who consume more resources than they produce. Crucially to the process, your team should not know if you employ an informal stack ranking to determine who receives additional development.
Intrusive leadership then, aligned to Welch’s principle, will see most leadership developments focused on the bottom 10% - those underperformers. Such underperformers drop the anchor and slow the rest of the team. Contemporary research on this concept indicates that if enough development activity occurs with the bottom 10%, the middle 70% will increase by absorption; the top 20%? These team members will almost be pushed by the middle 70%; there will be overlaps and swapping of percentiles; however, the concentration on those that need it the most develops the entire team throughout.
If we examine non-linear intrusive leadership, whereby external leaders (either your leaders or another department’s) attempt to lead your team, we will see one of two outcomes.
If your team is subject to non-linear intrusion and the first outcome is presented, you must think immediately: Why does my team respond better to an outside force? You must look objectively at your leadership techniques, communication and conflict management skills, and, importantly, your leadership style.
If the second outcome is presented, you have led your team well enough for enough trust to be formed; your team have closed ranks to an external force, effectively protecting themselves and you as their leader.
Ethical Dilemmas
Failures and misgivings are always attributable to individualism. Despite this, the fact remains of the culture which fostered these failures and misgivings must be held accountable. With it, the leadership of such a team is responsible for directing and managing that culture.
Teams are built on diverse individuals who hold subjective beliefs and adhere to ethical relativism. Skewed by the diversification of meaning, our social interactions, collective existence and workplace collaboration insist upon coexistence, moral and ethical behaviours.
Individualism has long been under scrutiny with the acceptance of actions and behaviours. What was once a move to ensure political correctness has now shifted to an ethically correct extreme. Our reflective capacity for ethical behaviours is removed, instead adding to a normative approach for social inclusion and toleration.
Systemic learning is pivotal to developing a greater ethical conscience while allowing for individualism. It is challenging to be a successful or effective leader in the modern world without a clear vision of reality. Applying blanket techniques to cover every eventuality can quickly become unethical practice, as seen historically in the British Army where blanket punishments were issued due to individual indiscretions.
So how does a leader know how to resolve substantial ethical dilemmas?
Critical evaluation, situational analysis and strong enough influence are three of the essential skills expected of leaders to resolve ethical issues. Taking a mental step back and identifying, analysing, and reflecting on the situation creates a cognitive gap from your environment, allowing you to focus, plan, and deliver. When we employ situational training to cover ethical leadership practice, there are three fundamental paradigms we must examine:
Building on our ethical leadership qualities, there are three more defined under nearly every management competency framework you will encounter: problem-solving, sound judgement and empathy. Leaders should seek to understand the pretext to diminished responsibility for unethical decisions, including indecision, yet by doing so cannot obscure or degrade autonomy. Aligned to intuitive rationality theory, the ability to generate an approach most suitable for any given situation includes reasoning, intuition and invention. The act of acquiring such a process is deliberate, despite instinct. Being able to process the data and information you are presented with will enable the development of knowledge and eventually into wisdom for increased effect.
Internal team leaders - those rising stars. Not a bad thing, the best leaders focus on developing emerging leaders, not to create followers, but to create more leaders. Challenges to authority can and do occur - second-guessing your decisions, creating a deliberate and subversive environment across their team peers in an attempt to conduct an internal coup d’etat. The unsanctioned bid to undermine leadership occurs across the workplace, with many areas becoming accustomed to seeing it as business as usual. The defining element that sets successful leaders and cohesive teams is how these attempts are dealt with.
So how do we react?
Organisational psychology theory will tell us that these people may feel undervalued, under-utilised or underwhelmed with their routine work; it may say that they may have difficulties aligning to the organisational culture, but critically, and the most important - they are not empowered in their duties.
So how do we empower?
Understanding the four dimensions of psychological empowerment in work, consisting of meaning, impact, self-determination and competence, is critical to understanding the application of supportive techniques to influence and determine a successful outcome. We know that empowerment is a motivational process that enhances self-efficacy, but many leaders struggle to deal with how to continue the process to fulfilment. Research tells us that trust is the primary driver to empowerment, achieved through leader approachability, team effectiveness and team value. As these increase, the more empowered each team member will become. Following trust formation, a sense of pride is created, and confident communication is developed. Overlaying this confident communication on the empowerment dimensions we discussed earlier, competence and self-determination are directly improved, creating an increased openness to experience. Fulfilling the empowerment cycle requires the developed openness to experience to be completed - attempts to solve more complex problems or refine process and procedure by applying innovation are two examples. This concept has a direct correlation between empowerment and career satisfaction. If your rising stars witness a tangible impact on influencing work outcomes from their efforts, they create new meaning. As their leader, this will enable you to develop their transformational and cognitive logic, removing the subversive and often toxic atmosphere that surrounds disenfranchised staff.
Broader Threat Environment
The broader threat environment consists of all threats to a leader’s authority and credibility from external sources. Intrusive leadership (of which there is a separate Insight article) can deliver positive outcomes despite the negative semantic association. Attempts to rebrand as involved leadership detract from the concept of leadership failure within a team. Stack ranking or a vitality curve is a management practice that rates team members against their peers. Within the commonly accepted Welch definition (20-70-10), the top 20% of team members are the most productive, described as charismatic, passionate, influential and consistently delivering results. The middle 70% are those who perform adequately, enabling critical business activities to continue - after all, if your dropped 70% of your team, your global productivity would decrease. The outliers, the bottom 10%, are defined as underachievers, those who fail to deliver and those who consume more resources than they produce. Crucially to the process, your team should not know if you employ an informal stack ranking to determine who receives additional development.
Intrusive leadership then, aligned to Welch’s principle, will see most leadership developments focused on the bottom 10% - those underperformers. Such underperformers drop the anchor and slow the rest of the team. Contemporary research on this concept indicates that if enough development activity occurs with the bottom 10%, the middle 70% will increase by absorption; the top 20%? These team members will almost be pushed by the middle 70%; there will be overlaps and swapping of percentiles; however, the concentration on those that need it the most develops the entire team throughout.
If we examine non-linear intrusive leadership, whereby external leaders (either your leaders or another department’s) attempt to lead your team, we will see one of two outcomes.
- Increased productivity.
- Strengthened team bonds, increased communication and increased internal trust.
If your team is subject to non-linear intrusion and the first outcome is presented, you must think immediately: Why does my team respond better to an outside force? You must look objectively at your leadership techniques, communication and conflict management skills, and, importantly, your leadership style.
If the second outcome is presented, you have led your team well enough for enough trust to be formed; your team have closed ranks to an external force, effectively protecting themselves and you as their leader.
Ethical Dilemmas
Failures and misgivings are always attributable to individualism. Despite this, the fact remains of the culture which fostered these failures and misgivings must be held accountable. With it, the leadership of such a team is responsible for directing and managing that culture.
Teams are built on diverse individuals who hold subjective beliefs and adhere to ethical relativism. Skewed by the diversification of meaning, our social interactions, collective existence and workplace collaboration insist upon coexistence, moral and ethical behaviours.
Individualism has long been under scrutiny with the acceptance of actions and behaviours. What was once a move to ensure political correctness has now shifted to an ethically correct extreme. Our reflective capacity for ethical behaviours is removed, instead adding to a normative approach for social inclusion and toleration.
Systemic learning is pivotal to developing a greater ethical conscience while allowing for individualism. It is challenging to be a successful or effective leader in the modern world without a clear vision of reality. Applying blanket techniques to cover every eventuality can quickly become unethical practice, as seen historically in the British Army where blanket punishments were issued due to individual indiscretions.
So how does a leader know how to resolve substantial ethical dilemmas?
Critical evaluation, situational analysis and strong enough influence are three of the essential skills expected of leaders to resolve ethical issues. Taking a mental step back and identifying, analysing, and reflecting on the situation creates a cognitive gap from your environment, allowing you to focus, plan, and deliver. When we employ situational training to cover ethical leadership practice, there are three fundamental paradigms we must examine:
- Productivity with disregard to consequence
- Performance and execution at all costs
- Cut-throat competition in the workplace
Building on our ethical leadership qualities, there are three more defined under nearly every management competency framework you will encounter: problem-solving, sound judgement and empathy. Leaders should seek to understand the pretext to diminished responsibility for unethical decisions, including indecision, yet by doing so cannot obscure or degrade autonomy. Aligned to intuitive rationality theory, the ability to generate an approach most suitable for any given situation includes reasoning, intuition and invention. The act of acquiring such a process is deliberate, despite instinct. Being able to process the data and information you are presented with will enable the development of knowledge and eventually into wisdom for increased effect.