Changing Education Paradigms

Understanding Informal Leaders In An Organization

While the formal leaders in our companies fight for the heads and the hands of its employees, the informal leaders are winning over the hearts and the minds of the people around them.

Managers, supervisors, executives or any others with formal power and title within an organization can reap huge benefits from cultivating and developing existing informal leaders in their work units. Or, informal leaders can work against the formal leaders in the organization.

When informal leaders are working towards achieving the same vision and goals as the formal leaders (and the organization itself), they can take a tremendous burden from the backs of managers and formal leaders. Some of the leadership functions, and many management functions can actually be carried out informally by those without actual authority. This frees those with formal management responsibility to focus on what they, themselves can uniquely do.

Informal leaders have some capabilities that more formal leaders do not, simply because they do NOT hold a position of designated authority. They can say things, for example, to other team members that could not be said by a person in an official management role, and their ability to influence is slightly different, since informal leaders are often perceived differently than formal leaders.

Think about a team -- let's say a sports team, where informal leaders are often talked about and lauded. Imagine (and you might want to think about George Steinbrenner, owner of the New York Yankees Baseball Team) that a senior person (owner) goes down to the locker room and rudely and aggressively criticizes specific players and the team in general for not playing well, and not trying, and threatens the team members. How might that be perceived by the players? By the media? While we can't predict whether the rant would be successful in terms of results, we can predict that the players' reactions may range from positive to negative depending on their history with the owner, AND that their reactions would almost certainly be different than if a respected informal leader did a similar thing in the clubhouse.

The informal leader who might take on this task is respected, perhaps trusted, based on his performance and relationships with the other players, while the owner is more likely to be in a leadership role due to his formal authority and power, and ability to instill fear in the players (note this is a generalization, since not all formal leaders are respected, or use fear to motivate).

In any event, the informal leader influences in different ways, and so is perceived differently. Of course, this influence doesn't only occur when the informal leader is criticizing or "kicking butt", but also happens as a result of other players seeing the commitment, level of intensity, integrity, and performance levels of an informal leader. For many "players" (and this applies within sports and without), who is more inspiring; the rich powerful owner of the team who has never played the sport, or the talented, respected, super competent and hard working teammate? Or even the less talented teammate who gives 110 percent? In many cases the informal peer leader holds more influence.

Here are a few bullet points to help you understand the power informal leaders have in any organization.

Not all informal leaders have intentionally gone out of their ways to become informal leaders. Sometiimes they "emerge" simply because others in the organization have great respect for them.
While informal leaders can be important or even essential to the success of an organization, they can also be huge impediments if they start pulling in directions that are in opposition to the direction the formal leaders value.
For the reason above, formal leaders may want to take steps to develop their informal leaders more completely, and keep lines of communication open with them.
While it may seem that promoting informal leaders to formal positions of power makes sense, it's also the case that some informal leaders may become ineffective if given formal authority (while some may be very successful). This is because formal authority may alter the relationships of the new formal leader with his or her formal peers.

Care needs to be taken when trying to harness the power of informal leadership. An informal leader's power and influence often derives from the perception that he or she has integrity, and stands up for what he or she believes, because their behavior has demonstrated that. When formal leaders try to co-opt, or manipulate informal leaders, the risk is that the informal leaders will rebel, or "stand against" the formal leader. Attempting to bribe, coerce or otherwise pressure an informal leader to toe the line may end up backfiring.

By Robert Bacal

What Really Motivates Us?

The EQ Engine

There are many ways of building the skills you need to get things done. Emotional Intelligence is what allows you to leaverage what you have learned and focus it on the things/goals that you have deemed important.

If we were to sit back and think about those initiatives we have started for ourselves that were interupted or abandoned all together. And if we could recall the reasons why they came to be or the reasons why they ended abrubtly we would, most likely, find that emotions played a huge part. We often decide to do things because of the way they make us feel. And we will stop doing something for the very same reason.

But thats not the complete story is it?! If you add in the elements of the relationship. And it doesnt matter if its a deaply personal relationship or a short 5 minute relationship with the teller at the bank. It it makes us feel a certain way, we will let it be known verbally or by our actions in the present or the future. Emotions both drive our behaviors and shape our relationships.

This all makes sense doesnt it? So, now that we understand how important emotions are in our daily life, lets talk for a moment about why we spend so little time building our emotional muscle. If you start to talk about emotional intelligence with others you may find that its not a subject thats easily discussed. Because of course, many of us are emotional about it.

So what of emotional entelligence? Its been studied and written about and the facts are clear. You can study as long as you want, learn all there is to learn. Knowledge along has on a fleeting effect on how successsful we are as humans. Its the ability to recognize, except and manage the emotions within ourselves and the emotions others may be feeling that allows us to leverage our knowledge and turned it into overwhelming success and satisfaction.

Here are a couple of great books on the subject:

Emotional Intelligence: Daniel Goleman
The New Psycho-Cybernetics: Maxwell Maltz

Now im off to improve my EQ!

OKG

The Hidden Price of Perfection

What is the hidden cost of expecting perfection from our employees, our children or ourselves?  What does it drive us to do and how does it drive us to behave?  I have come to believe that many of the issues companies are having with productivity, disengagement or dispassionate employees may fall squarely on our behavior as leaders.  The unintended result being an employee who takes extra care and extra caution to get it exactly right which reduces the mental and physical bandwidth to think freely about how to do it better.

Allow me to share with you my thoughts on the matter.

Most successful companies have spent a lot of time, money and energy setting a vision of success for their human capital.  These companies are lead by good leaders who know full well that you need a goal and vision to aim for in order to move an entity in the proper direction.  They communicate their vision with varying degrees of success and leave the bolt turning to the mid and lower level managers.  These managers can be quite literal in their interpretation and set down rules and guidelines to insure the vision.  After the guidelines are set and communicated, policies are established to insure that all the companies’ human resources are following what have determined to be Best Practices.  Now this is not, in and of itself, a bad thing but we must consider where these best practices come from and how they are enforced.

Many best practices come from the human capital ranks.  Outstanding corporate performers who have found a way to utilize their unique strengths, talents and abilities to support and represent the companies vision to the customer base.  The word to pay attention to here is Unique.  We all have unique attributes that, when leveraged appropriately and nurtured carefully, can lead us to perform in a flow state.

Here is where things become interesting and counterproductive.

The widely excepted best practices become the standard for the rest of the organization.  No consideration is paid to if the practice leverages your unique attributes and the employees are forced to perform a certain way because it’s been proven to get the best results!  That is, the best results for a particular few who may share similar attributes.  And because we want to succeed and be a contributor to the company’s success as well as impress our boss, the employee stops nurturing their unique talents and skills because they are now outside of the desired behaviors.

So what’s the impact?

Well, anyone who has tried to write with their less dominant hand can tell you, it does not feel natural.  It leaves us second guessing our abilities and forces us to check often to insure we are behaving or performing correctly.  The leader’s job becomes less about leading people and growing their skills and talents and more about managing the checks and adjustments.  Our employee’s free spirit, ingenuity and ability to flow into uncharted and possibly more impactful waters are dampened and often completely snuffed out.  This is not sustainable and often leads to mental and physical fatigue, which is a forerunner to disengagement, and a lack of passion.

So……..how can companies avoid this?  How can parents avoid this?

More to come.

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on the matter.

OKG