Quick Leadership Plays   

Quick to read, easily consumed and immediately actionable!

Negotiation Refresher 

Workplace negotiations often breakdown because the participants lock on to their respective positions and lose sight of their interests. It's a good practice to ask yourself why you want what you want, and to focus on learning the same from your counterpart. It's not uncommon for two parties to be far apart on positions, only to reach an equitable arrangement once interests are better understood.   

Art's recommendation...any Negotiation content by Kellogg Professor Leigh Thompson. For a fast read try Thompson's inexpensive Kindle version of: The Truth About Knowing How to Negotiate-The Essential Truths in 20 Minutes. 

Leaders, Can Your Team Members Pass the "Walk in the Door" Test? 

One of the most interesting "tells" on a firm's performance culture is whether everyone from the CEO to the receptionist can connect their daily priorities and goals to the firm's strategies. Not surprisingly, in firms struggling on strategy execution, there's a high failure rate on this informal assessment.    

If your team members are walking in the door on a daily basis without a clear view on how their work fits into the big picture, it's up to you as a leader to help them make the connection. Remember, people do their best when they have context for the importance of their work.

Art's suggestion: Good Strategy/Bad Strategy-The Difference and Why it Matters by Richard Rumelt.       

Simplify by Subtracting and Achieve "Elegant" Leadership. The INC Magazine interview for March, 2012,features Matthew May, author of the forthcoming book, Addition by Subtraction, in which he outlines the concept of Elegant Leadership:  

"Elegance requires that you subtract. Leaders should ask themselves two questions: One: What would people in my organization like me to reduce or stop doing? Two: What would my competitors hate for me to reduce or stop doing?"    

Want to know where to find your best and brightest emerging leaders?  

Here's a hint, you'll have to use your peripheral vision to see them, because they are moving sideways across your organization at a high rate of speed.

The ever-shrinking middle layer of management has been replaced by a variety of different individuals fulfilling roles as project and product and team leaders. Their titles say, "manager," but the real meaning is something like, "tons of responsibility and no authority."

These Informal or "Integrator" leaders as they are referenced in management journals, are the ones busy getting work done through and with others by marshaling resources, building coalitions and cutting through the organizational nonsense that slows many functional leaders to a "protect my turf" crawl. Informal leaders are politically adept, organizationally agile and a valuable source of talent on your team.    

Existing leaders are well served to cultivate an Informal Leader culture and class to cope with the prevailing market forces. The need for speed, flexibility and adaptability have never been greater, and the better your people are at traversing functional boundaries to "get stuff done," the better your odds of success.

And for those seeking to strengthen and grow your careers, instead of looking up the organizational ladder, it's time to rethink your view of success and start looking sideways as the best way to make a difference.

5 Ideas for Cultivating Informal Leaders in Your Organization:

1. Give your people room to run beyond your functional boundaries. Don't create artificial silo or turf barriers for your people.  

2. Use your power to broker alliances with peers in other functions that pave the way for people and teams to come together to tackle the big issues of the day.   

3. Invest in the soft skills development so critical to informal leaders, including communication and negotiation training and team development.

4. Design developmental assignments to push people into informal leadership roles. Ensure that assignments challenge individuals to quickly form relationships and guide groups towards problem resolution. Ensure an ample flow of feedback from participants and stakeholders.

5. Engage Informal Leaders in the strategy processes of the firm. Those leading sideways see things through a different lens than traditional functional leaders. Since much of strategy success is about getting things done (execution), involving your informal leaders early on will pay dividends down the road.   

The Bottom-Line for Now:

The issue of building a powerful Informal Leader culture transcends the topic of project management. This is neither a functional nor a vocational issue as much as it is about building an environment that works effectively in this ever-changing world. The challenge now is to find ways to deliberately develop an Informal Leader class and quit relying on its emergence by accident.

For information on workshops, conference events and case activities related to the books, e-mail.