Employees: New Currency

LET me start this article with three intriguing questions: What are the characteristics of effective leaders? What do they do? What are the expectations in these challenging times? Let me provide some answers. Smart, creative and highly effective leaders are the architects of the “Interlocking Faculty” or cohesive branding of organisations. They are committed drivers of value-delivering thought processes by the entire workforce. They recognise and respond consistently and adequately to market changes and are regularly seeking and establishing new revenue streams and effective processes to achieve them.

They are the “unicorn” leaders who use teamwork as the “magic bullet” or the “new currency”. Ronald Heifetz and Donald Laurie in their book on “The Work of Leadership” described them as the effective mobilizer of employees to make critical behavioural changes in order to cope with adaptive problems and competing perspectives. On a daily basis and with recognition, praise, motivation and rewards for employees, they are leveraging on collective intelligence to shift norms. Their Employees are emotionally engaged and trust each other because of the organisation’s collective expression of ethical behaviours. According to Peter Drucker, effective leaders lead and also support employees by “lifting employees’ vision to high insights and building individual capacities beyond initially perceived limitations”.

The result of a recent Harvard Business Review research revealed that effective leaders, apart from IQ, displayed strengths in emotional intelligence (EQ) competencies such as, self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy and social skill.

Richard Branson, a high school dropout but now “a very Successful and authentic entrepreneur” and founder of the Virgin Group said in an interview on LinkedIn that “bringing out the best in employees through emotional intelligence is critical to success in business”. The leader must have the skill of active listening. He must listen intuitively to employees’ stories, ask questions and search conversations for depth, meaning and understanding with their needs in mind. He must always engage with active listening to help employees succeed.

The leader must actively live The “Empathy Advantage”. He must understand employees’ needs beyond salary, and build the culture of healthy support, critical foundation for high performance and expected productivity.

As I have often stated in my various write-ups on effectiveness of leadership, desirable communication skill is a sine-qua-non to building value-delivering relationships in the workplace. Sincere comradery impacts healthy overall workplace experience and opens doors to progress.

Employees might fall prey to the “set-up-to-fail” dynamic if the leader lacks emotional intelligence or EQ skills. The leader’s perception that an employee is a weak performer might be due to this unfortunate syndrome. He assumes wrongly because of his deficiency, that the employee “cannot adequately grasp the assigned responsibility; he is not driven to succeed, not to talk of excel by giving his best, cannot set priorities or lacks direction” because of the wrong perception of his failure in an activity. Maybe, he missed a deadline, underachieved his target or the boss’s subjective conclusion that “he does not get along with him”.

According to Daniel Goleman, it is possible that the employee’s failure or poor performance is hugely based on the leader because he created and reinforced the dynamics of underperformance. Please note that an organisation must get the best from not only the employee but the leader also.

The leader, according to Jess Coles, is guilty of underperformance if “he ignores problems and sends the wrong signals.

He ought to agree expectations with employees and the mini as well as the main goals.

He is the coach and mentor and must help individual employees improve their skills. The leader must give feedbacks and with colleagues, monitor progress.” An organisation can only grow strategically with effective “leaders of influence.”

Leaders must know that the organisation is not a collection of business units but a portfolio of core competencies. That is, the organisation’s collective knowledge about coordinate diverse value-adding skills. It is the efforts of employees combined with effective leadership that invent new markets, exploit emerging ones and delight customers with what they had not imagined but definitely would at the end of the day, add immense values to their lives.

Judith Glaser noted that the DNA of the thriving and successful organisation is “creating WE” culture. She corrected the obviously wrong message that leadership is about being dominant. Use of force and authority in the workplace are corrosive to a healthy organisation. Authority is definitely not leadership. Judith explained that “hierarchical, chain-of-command notion of leadership is the greatest contributor to organisational dysfunction.” The effective leader is not the “tough boss” or an intimidating executive. Engagement and partnering, create growth.

Let me add that learning and continuous development would also prop-up employees as the new currency for growth and prosperity. It is however, very important that organisations “tailor-make” this very important activity. William Seidman and Richard Gobavac in their book: “The Star Factor”, pointed out that organisations must transform employees into “self-directed active learners”. They must always be willing to learn, adapt and embrace change.

Let me conclude by stressing the fact that the insight, commitment and hard work of team members (or employees) would only deliver phenomenal performance, if they are effectively engaged, motivated and encouraged with the emotional intelligence skills of leaders. Sensitivity and receptiveness to the employees wellbeing would surely make organisations glow steadily.

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