You Can't Lead If No One Is Following You
December 2011
In most organizations, the days of blind
allegiance to titular leaders are long gone. For a while, this was largely a
U.S. phenomenon, but as we watched country after country fall in the Arab
Spring movement, it became clear that, even in a dictatorship, followers
will eventually "discard" ineffective leaders.
by Corbette
Doyle
In Western economies, ineffective leaders have had the cushion of a
crisis economy. With high unemployment levels, few people have been willing
to quit without another job in hand. Evidence includes the drop in
voluntary turnover from
12.5 percent pre-crisis
to
9.2 percent in 2010. But a recent survey from MetLife
suggests that
more than a third of the workforce plans to quit as soon as they can,
and
84 percent say they intend to actively look for new work. The number one
reason they want to leave?
People don't trust their leader. Bad bosses are also the
#1 source of stress on the job—and stress leads to
reduced performance, poor health, and higher turnover. And according to
Right Management's recent survey of 1,400 chief executive officers and
heads of human resources departments, the primary reason leaders fail is
"failure to build a team or relationships."1
With a
slowly improving economy and the inevitable retirement of baby boomers, this
exodus may begin much sooner than companies are prepared for. "Instead of
celebrating the upturn, many corporate leaders may well face a new problem:
replacing lost employees as the economy kicks into gear and talent is once
again a scarce commodity."2 Who leaves? Your top
performers, those with job options because they have the knowledge, skills,
and attitude to make a difference—in other words, the people you least want
to lose.
Leader Response
What's a leader to do? The first step
lies in understanding the extent to which your personal success is dependent
on the work of others. Questions you might explore to put the importance of
your followers in perspective include:
- Do you lead a unit or
team where subject matter expertise is critical?
- Does your role
involve matrix management such that you do not have hiring/firing power over
employees who are key to your role?
- Do you often lead committees
or task forces, the results of which are critical to your success; or are
you leading a virtual team that involves people from multiple locations?
An affirmative response to any one of these questions would indicate that
you are highly dependent on others.
The next step is to determine how
effective you are at engaging and motivating the people you are trying to
lead. Does your organization do an annual employee engagement survey? If so,
check to see if you can have access to the results for people you formally
lead. It's not perfect, but it's a start. How do your responses on questions
about trust, inclusion, and giving feedback compare to your peers? In lieu
of or to supplement formal survey results, consider using an anonymous
survey tool like Survey Monkey or
Rypple. Ask questions such as those from
Gallup's employee engagement survey:
- Do you believe your
opinions matter?
- Do you know what's expected of you?
- Have you received praise for a job well done?
Once you have diagnosed your need for engaged followers and your current
skill at motivating followers, explore proven strategies for employee
engagement and effective team management. For those in more traditional
leadership roles, ask yourself if you consistently provide
clear communications about the results you expect, timelines, processes,
etc. Do you give frequent feedback rather than the once-a-year, much-dreaded
annual performance review? And do you help employees identify
their opportunities for career advancement? Engaged, high-potential
employees want to grow their careers, and they will seek out—and
follow—leaders who help them do that. Team management can be more complex
and requires that leaders ensure that members know who is actually on the
team, particularly complicated in a virtual world, provide compelling
team goals that people can care about, and make sure that there's sufficient
task direction and resource support to get the work done.3
While these tips may be useful when you have a semblance of formal
authority, technology and globalization have increased the likelihood that
you will be responsible for getting results when it isn't clear to those
around you that you are their leader.
Leadership expert Jay Conger suggests several strategies for "Exerting
Influence without Authority," including: using persuasion as a consensus
tool rather than a hammer, spending one-on-one time with people whose buy-in
you need to build a coalition of advocates, and mastering the art of
networking in a highly connected world.4 Networking
inside an organization is less about the number of people you are connected
to on LinkedIn and more about your ability to identify and get what you need
from the go-to people at each "gate" in the organization. This will be the
subject of a future column.
Conclusion
Leaders and followers are like dance partners; success is mutually
dependent on the actions of both. The best leaders recognize this and build
teams of people who will follow them just as readily during times of full
employment as they will when jobs are scarce commodities.
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