Igniting Leadership

Designing of workshop to Ignite Leadership – Kick off for the year

As CHRO’s most of us have the responsibility to help support senior leadership ignite commitment and passion to deliver the new year. How could one possible go about designing the event for top Leaders in the business?

To start with:

Setting the Context:

CEO to kick off and remind everyone about the Organization Purpose, for us at Diageo (to Celebrate Life Everyday, Everywhere) its ambition to be the Most Trusted, Respected and Best Performing CPG in India. To remind each one, of the journey over the year, in particular the previous year, and gains made and losses.

From there, to confirm the Strategic Vision of the Organisation and what it wishes to Shape aligned with ask from multiple stakeholders. Clarity on Where to Win, and How to Win. And clear battle grounds. Ensure time is spent on getting voice into the room. Identifying early who is the decision maker is critical. Clarify, Many Voices, But One Vote for Speed, Smartness, and Simplicity to pave way for clear Accountability and Decision making.

Business Growth through People Growth

Confirm that all of this would get done through People who are passionate and committed. CHRO to talk about the Leadership Standards all Top Leaders must demonstrate and would include:

·      Winning in Execution

·      Future Focus

·      Inspired in Purpose

·      Investment in Talent.

Clarify what this would mean in the context. Offer Personal Context. Tell Stories from real life. Make it personal. Connect with the audience. Use of slides, are meaningless to do this. Use of theatre could be very useful here. Have team create the AS IS now world, through non- verbal theatre and the desired world where these leadership standards are demonstrated.

Through processing and engaging and reflecting on this Experience, participants see connections between what they do as a result of their Leadership style and the climate they create in their teams and in the environment. What Leadership Standards show up more often, what less, which ones do we struggle with. By function, which requires more attention.  How does each Leaders relate to each of the standards. How do we measure success on these. For what we treasure, we must measure, and review and with consequences and rewards positive and otherwise.

Connecting the parts to the whole

The third stage is to connect the vision of the functions and the functional strategic journey to the whole. One smart way to do this is by setting up a bazar, in an interactive way showing the progress made by each functions, previous year achievement, goals for upcoming year, support and inter-dependencies with others. Through gaming, quizzes, clips, and creative ways one can do this smartly. Imagine having a Kuan Banega Crorepati, for Compliance related questions, or building the 4 pillars of a house (strategy) with bricks denoting initiatives, with clear colour codes related to Sales, Margins or cash or better still having a Dragon’s Den to giving a pitch for ideas around Simplification.

Making this Fun, Interactive and engaging is critical to get past this stage and to ensure every participant is signed on.

Support Leadership Effectiveness for Leadership, Not Management

In the final module one needs to help support Leaders to live their Leadership Standards by investing in people and support amplifying personal purpose. Performance Coaching and real practice sessions help make that happen.

Conclusion:

Ensure every leader leaves the room:

·      Clear about Performance Ambition for upcoming year

·      Clear priorities and owners

·      Inter-dependencies

·      Commitment to Leadership Standards

·      Commitment to lead self and others with Purpose.

·      Clear understanding of Business Results expected.

·      And more importantly, what’s in it for each one.

Closure could be a ceremony, a ritual around self commitments made in public to honour and abide.

Solution focused Coaching

Solution focused Coaching

At the outset, Solution focused coaching is not about coach providing solutions. It continues to be about exploration by client, but instead of focusing on the problem, the focus is about exploring what positive outcome is wanted.

What is it that you want to happen? What would a positive outcome look like? So rather than ask what are the issues you want to resolve, ask instead, what is the outcome you wish to achieve?

Most coaches move around the axis of problem solving:

1.  Tell me more about the problem?

2.  When did you experience this most recently?

3.  How is this impacting you?

4.  Where is this coming from?
5.  What is making the issue continue?

A solution focus approach moves along a different axis:

1.  What would be different if you did not have this issue?

2.  How could you make this problem and opportunity?

3.  If you did not have tis issue, what would you have?

A solution focus approach tries to move to a future orientation exploring positive outcomes. Here are a few instances of exploratory questions.

1.  What is your best approach for our session today?

2.  Suppose this is useful, how would you notice?

3.  What difference would that make to you?

4.  If that happens, what other differences could that make for you?

5.  What’s important to you about that?

6.  What would you need to do differently?

7.  What do you believe you must Start doing?

8.  What do you believe you must Stop doing?

9.   Suppose you really connected with this purpose deeply, what’s the first feeling of change you would notice?

    This approach allows the client to move beyond a myopic of this problem, extending it to a large vista of opportunities. Its about social constructivism. It impacts the emotions at a very deep level: it is not cognitive. Both Master Key, written a century back, and the Book of Secrets even more recently a decade ago, allows for a deep personal purpose. It is forward visualisation, or in NLP, what is referred to as a change of state phenomenon. 
I  
    I read somewhere, that a feeble mind sees problems, a stronger one sees a challenge, and a determined one sees tremendous opportunities. 

  

HR or IR - its the context that makes it so

 At HR Conferences they continues to be  huge discussions on Industrial Relations (IR) versus Human Resource (HR).  

As my friend Promod Mhatme once explained to me the difference.

He argued that when Demand of the workforce exceeds the Supply, it becomes an HR Challenge. However, when the reverse is true, wherein Supply exceeds Demand, it becomes an IR Challenge.

As he explains, Individuals would continue to negotiate individually with their employer, where demand exceeds supply. This would be true both for a highly qualified professional as also for an artisan. Each would demand a market price, at a premium, as this is pure economics.

In environments, where Supply exceeds Demand, employees have no ability to negotiate terms and conditions, and in order to strengthen their negotiation power would resort to collective bargaining. Paradoxical, as it may seem, the formation of collective bargaining, at a unit level, is but a result of weakened negotiations. If despite this, they find no traction to re-set their ability to negotiate, membership to federations arise to further provide more strength. Some federations have no choice and to further expand to global federations as they find their muscle power weak in their own countries.

We have seen this play itself out. A decade ago, Pilots were an HR Challenge on account of paucity and high demand. Pilots salaries were high. Today, as Supply as increased, the pilots have had no choice but to press for their demands through collective efforts.

With concerns on outsourcing across the world, and attempts to bring back more jobs onshore, the demand for IT/ITES off shore is a very real concern.

Professionals on both sides of this debate, should view the issue of HR or IR not in isolation, but rather through this prism of context of demand and supply. In this, the challenge can turn to opportunities for remedial and resolutions.  

Fiction / Non-Fiction - are we reading enough?

What’s with reading….

Tell you what, reading fiction and non-fiction is on the decline amongst the youth.

And there’s no organized social research around this, just anecdotal references around what I observe. Fact is, a few sample of people I have met, just cannot recall books they have read, and even if they have read a few, cannot really remember most of it.

The world is changing: Analogous to the cricket example from a 5 day test match, to a one day, to the new T20 format, games evolve. And I guess so has books. From the thick Thomas Hardy of ‘Far from the Madding Crowd’ and the Character of Gabriel Oak, the eternal patient lover on the sideline, book have given way to ‘quick airport reads’ – slim editions. Most content today are PDF files of Summaries of Books or Articles. We are saying less in each short burst, but saying ever so much in the multiple bursts of articles. Akin to Machine gun firing versus a sniper shot.

Again, back then, in my teens, leisure time was spent with basic toys, board games and TV watching (when it finally arrived) was a group activity. The radio was primarily for news or music from Ceylon. Interactions were fewer and travel ever more sparse.  The newspaper was our primary connects with the world outside. Back then, I recall now with immense nostalgia my own HG Wells ‘time travel machine’ that could take me forward or back ward in time – said simply, Books.

Books were my favorite companion then, and a lifelong companion now. Curled with a book, I was transported to new worlds, events, time, and characters, culture. In the 1:1 silent connect, the book and I, my imaginative mind, simulated by books conjured up sounds, pictures, living people, introduced me to new lands, etc. But most of all, I discovered the power of ‘ideas’. New thoughts, bold thoughts, strange thoughts.

Reading connected me to the living: I could see more around me, connect more, experience more, and understand more. Books symbolized the magic of ‘rubbing the Aladdin’s lamp’ and make wishes come true.

To each age, its new propellant for personal growth. Times must change, old order giving way to new, as Tennyson says, lest one idea corrupts the world.

For me, give me a great book, some time for self, and that’s my Nirvana. J