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Personal Business Coach
Inspired Development and Coaching |
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Living Leadership: A practical guide for ordinary heroes, by G Binney, G Wilke and C Williams, FT Prentice Hall, 2005
Between 1999 and 2003, nine researchers from Ashridge Business School in the UK and HEC in France lived alongside leaders and followers in major organisations across Europe.
They observed them as they worked on a day to day basis in order to arrive at a description of what real leaders actually do and what it is about what they do that makes a difference.
Their work was grounded on objective observation rather than academic theories.
What they ended up with after spending four years working with a total of over 700 leaders is written up in their book “Living Leadership”. It is an account of leadership in action with all its anxiety, uncertainty and expectation. The book gives real insights about the constraints and realities of leadership and what it takes to make things happen in the real world.
The realities of leadership.
People are most effective when they bring themselves to leading.
Effective leaders:
Come across to others as real people, flesh and blood, and not wearing some sort of mask or pretence
Draw on all their humanity, their intelligence, their emotions and their intuition. They do not stay in their heads and draw just on their rational selves. They make use of all their senses and intelligence
Remember what they know from all their life experiences and make use of them in the world of work.
Overall lessons from the research.
Leading is a social process; it happens between people
The success or failure of leaders is dependant on the ability to work with the context
It also depends on the ability of individuals to bring themselves, warts and all
Using your life experience is more productive than seeking to perfect your leadership competencies
You don’t have to be a superhero to be a leader
What works is to get connected to the real, to acknowledge your limits and value who you really are
It takes time
Getting connected: you depend on others.
Building good enough working relationships comes before running operations or shaping the future. It is the necessary foundation for delivering results.
Leaders need to work with their people and stop doing things to them – you can respond to this requirement by seeing yourself in the middle and not just at the top.
Trust, respect and acknowledgement of interdependence do not come from talking about them but from experiences of working together when people see how you are and what you do.
Issues that are not easily resolved and require the collective intelligence of you and your group provide a key opportunity to connect with your group
Recognise the importance of connecting with the group around you, as a whole, and not just individuals.
Context, context, context: the art of the possible.
People are desperate to work in an environment that is more practical about what is do-able
The success or failure of leaders depends more on the context (social and political, economic and business, organisation cultures) than on individual qualities and abilities.
Leadership can only be understood by reference to a specific context
If you give the context its due respect, you will be more effective as a leader; if you seek to fit the context into your vision, a lot of time and energy will be wasted
Leading involves having the courage to face the issues that everyone is aware of but no-one dares mention
Continuity needs leading at least as much as change. It’s a major accomplishment to appreciate what works at the moment; it’s an easy way to dismantle and re-engineer at will
How should leaders be - and what should they do in a particular situation? It all depends …
Coming alive as a leader: using senses and experience.
Leaders need to be real, available and vulnerable for people to connect with them and work with them
What makes people interesting are their imperfections
Leaders are the people in each group who are more interested than others in the “we” and have a fear of rejection
Leaders fulfil a need in themselves to be “on stage” and meet a need in others for an authority who holds them together and helps them to get better at what they do
By meeting the needs of others, the leader satisfies some of his own needs
They are driven by inner daemons
Surfing, sinking, swimming: don’t panic, you're human.
It is normal as a leader to have times when you feel you are just surviving or just coping with all the pressures but not moving forward
Don’t beat yourself up for this
The moments when you are surviving and coping can help you to learn to be more effective as a leader – if you can make time and space to step back and reflect
Even when you have learned and developed, there will still be times when you feel you are sinking
Dreams and plans always change when they come into contact with reality; the choice you have is how much you blame others – and yourself – and how much you can get on and focus on different aspirations
Leading in the moment: become more versatile.
There is no one right way to lead
The leading that is needed depends on the business situation, the organisational culture and the characteristics and dynamics of the people you are working with
You need to make choices from moment to moment about how you interact with others. The researchers talk about seven areas of choice – spaces in which leaders lead, play and create:
Understanding – enquiring while knowing
Direction – acknowledging limits whilst imagining a better future
Timing – waiting and seeing while accelerating progress
Relationships – getting close while maintaining distance
Loyalties – putting your own needs first while serving your organisation
Authority – letting go whilst keeping control
Self belief – showing vulnerability wile being strong
Look after yourself: practice “healthy selfishness”.
Get the personal support that works for you
Develop “thinking spaces” – places where you can stop and reflect on what’s working and what’s not working so well, express your feelings, without damaging key working relationships, and identify how to move forward
Have people to talk to honestly and openly about the issues that most concern you and take time to work out what you want for you and for your people
Pay attention to your feelings and allow yourself to see them as useful data on what is happening
Know your limits – what expectations you can reasonably take on and what you can’t
Get feedback
Use your “inner daemons”.
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