Month: May 2010

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Leadership Competencies for the Common Good

An executive director talking with a leadership coach

Reason’s whole pleasure, all the joys of sense,
Lie in three words — health, peace, and competence.
~ Alexander Pope

Alexander Pope penned those lines of iambic pentameter in the first half of the 1700s. But I wouldn’t be surprised if I heard them from a stressed-out 21st century nonprofit executive director. Imagine the conversation.

An Executive Director, on the verge of burn-out, talks to her leadership coach:

Nonprofit ED: (stress evident in her voice) I still care about the mission. I want to move this organization forward. But I can’t see the big picture. Everyone wants something from me. The budget’s a mess. We’ve set some tough goals and I’m feeling overwhelmed. Like I’m just not up to it.

Coach: What do you need?

Client: I want to enjoy my work again. I want be able to make choices with all my senses intact. It’s pretty simple, really. I need health, peace, and competence.

Leadership Competence in Civic Life

In Tuesday’s blog post, Steve Wolinski wrote, “The primary benefit of competencies is that they provide an easily shared and understood view of leadership that can be used in a wide variety of ways to build human capital and drive business outcomes.”

This morning, I’ll share a set of four competencies, developed by the Kansas Leadership Center, to help individuals exercise leadership in civic life. For two years, I’ve been using these competencies in coaching conversations with clients in Kansas and across the country. We find them useful in guiding the answers to two common questions about leadership:

  1. What can I do to focus my efforts?
  2. What should I pay attention to in order to make progress on the issues I care about?

Civic Leadership Competencies (courtesy of Kansas Leadership Center)

DIAGNOSE SITUATION

  • Explore adaptive and systemic interpretations
  • Distinguish the technical and adaptive elements
  • Distinguish the process challenges from the content challenges
  • Test multiple interpretations
  • Read the temperature in system
  • Identify the locus of the work

ENERGIZE OTHERS

  • Engage unusual voices
  • Work across factions
  • Start where they are
  • Speak to loss
  • Infuse the work with purpose
  • Build a trustworthy process
  • Discover connecting interests

MANAGE SELF

  • Identify you capabilities, vulnerabilities and triggers
  • Figure out how others perceive your role in the system
  • Distinguish self from role
  • Choose among competing values
  • Increase tolerance for uncertainty, ambiguity and conflict
  • Experiment beyond your comfort zone

INTERVENE SKILLFULLY

  • Make conscious choices
  • Raise the heat
  • Give the work back
  • Hold relentlessly to purpose
  • Speak from the heart
  • Act experimentally

What do you think? What interests you? Any thing you want to experiment with? What competencies or sub-points do you want to hear more about?

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The importance of team governance

An-elderly-man-talking-to-a-group-of-people

From guest writer David Kershaw, from eVisioner MetaTeam®

A friend of mine who has been in business for many years advises new managers who are trying to run an organization for the first time. Several times he has told me stories of young execs who get down in the weeds helping to get the actual work done while the company starts to drift and lose its way. His advice to them has to do with separating the work of organizing the work from helping to perform the work in progress. “Look, playing the odds that things will continue to go right is a bad idea,” he says. “Pretty often you have to step back and work on the business, not in the business.”

Running a business can be a bit like juggling
Managing a business or team can be a bit like juggling

In simple form, that pretty much sums up the situation many team leaders find themselves in. A pretty broad swath of project managers and team leaders are savvy enough to know that organizing the group at the outset is Job One. They bring people together using good communication, create a charter laying out the goals and ground rules, and overall get things off on the right foot. Great initial organization = great project, right? Continue reading “The importance of team governance”

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Hank’s Top Ten Fundraising ‘”Musts” 6-10

the board members of a non profit organization

10. All Board Members, MUST be donors – to the best of their ability. Not all board members are wealthy, but everyone should give at the highest level possible for their circumstances. It is important to be able to say to the public that 100% of your board supports your mission with their dollars. If your board members won’t give, why should anyone else?

9. You MUST give people reasons that will make them want to give. That you need money is not one of those reasons. Show prospective donors how their giving will make a difference in people’s lives. And, more importantly, show them how their giving will make a difference in their own lives.

8. You MUST understand that the best person-to-person fundraiser is a well-trained and well-motivated volunteer who solicits his/her peers, friends, family and colleagues. Professional fundraising staff or counsel can help you design and run your program and train your volunteers, but staff and counsel cannot usually do as good a job soliciting as can an impassioned volunteer.

7. You MUST do adequate planning/research before implementing any fundraising strategy — no matter the size of the gifts you’re soliciting or the goal you need to reach. And, you MUST periodically test variations of your fundraising methodology to ensure that your efforts are as cost-effective as possible.

6. You MUST have a means/method of tracking your fundraising and leadership prospects, your donors and your contacts with them. If you’re a very small organization and only have a few prospects/donors, you could probably use file folders and/or spreadsheets; but, once you have significant numbers of individuals to track, you must have the appropriate computer software.

There are many brands of such software, some is free, some is expensive, but don’t buy on the basis of cost. Select the software that will allow you the best use of the data you will collect. And don’t try to design your own — unless you’re a fundraising database expert, you don’t know what information to collect and how to arrange it.

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Have a question about starting or expanding your fundraising? Email me at AskDCA@Major-Capital-Giving.com. With over 30 years of counseling in major gifts, capital campaigns, bequest programs and the planning studies to precede these three, we’ll work to answer your question.

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Is the “Social” In Social Enterprise Redundant?

An office space with workers sitting at their desk

Do we still need a “social” enterprise sector? Many businesses have “social impact” at least with their customers. And these customers around the world are demanding greater accountability and environmental sensitivity.

Here’s what a reader to this blog wrote last week. “The underlying distinction made between social and business enterprise is thin,” noted Ashim Kumar Chatterjee. “All businesses have to serve some social need to be able to last. I would be inclined to believe that there is a direct relationship between the business of a business enterprise and social needs. So long as the deliverables of the business remain socially relevant, the business will survive and sustain itself. The entire gamut of eco-friendly products and technologies are a case in point.”

Several people who work in the business sector made similar points to me last week at the SEA Summit + World Forum in San Francisco. These are folks who share the goals of the social enterprise movement but don’t use that term in their work. For at least some of their investors and customers, “social” comes across as uncompetitive, higher priced, inefficient.

So should we call the whole thing off?

I don’t think so. We have a long ways to go before all or even most businesses incorporate public impact into their business decisions. Think BP. And the nonprofit sector has just as long an entrepreneurial row to hoe to have social impact given the challenging philanthropic realities of the 21st Century. I think social enterprise is still a powerful term that helps organize our thinking (and ourselves) as we set out to “harness the power of the marketplace to solve critical social or environmental problems.”

What do you think?

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OK, Mr. Blankfein, How are you going to put ethics first?

Ethics concept

From the Wall Street Journal on May 5, 2010:

“Frankly, at this point we have to go with an open mind and determine what we may be doing wrong,” Mr. Blankfein told customers of its private-wealth-management business during a 30-minute conference call. “On a very microscopic level, we’re going to use this as an opportunity for a deep dive on our practices and how we run things.”

0505blankfeinGoldman Sachs Chairman and CEO Lloyd Blankfein said the firm will always put clients first.

He pledged to clients that he wants Goldman to “be the leader in things like ethics, in putting clients first.” Mr. Blankfein added “we don’t want people to be OK with Goldman Sachs. We want people to be bragging that they have their accounts with Goldman Sachs.”

Making Ethical Culture a Priority

The challenge for any organization to make ethics a priority is a big one. For Goldman Sachs, it will require a deep level commitment of not just the senior staff, but from all of its Managing Directors. In today’s environment employees, as well as external stakeholders, have no tolerance for superficial ethics programs and pronouncements. Putting clients first because of Goldman’s ethics will not happen merely because every employee is given a curriculum of web-based training modules to sit through. Goldman’s leadership will need to come to understand where there are gaps between the expectations of its clients and the expectations of its directors. These gaps are real and need to be openly discussed. Clearly laying out those gaps will be the first step to creating a dialogue where real alignment of interests can happen. Keeping in mind what will earn real buy-in from clients, and from Managing Directors will be the only way Mr. Blankfein will keep his pledge.

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Leadership Competencies

Paper boats illustrating the concept of good leadership

Introduction to Leadership Competencies

It is clear that competencies have become a dominant method for the selecting, developing, and directing the efforts of leaders in organizations. My current definition of competencies is that they are the qualities most strongly associated with advanced levels of leadership and desired outcomes in an organization. The following is an example of a competency I created for manager level leaders:

Maximize Relationships: The manager develops solid relationships and models the importance of working together in a collaborative manner. He/she works to remove unhelpful boundaries and promote collaboration between teams and business units. Strives to include and incorporate the ideas of others into decisions, tasks, and projects. He/she is willing and able to address and resolve conflict between and with others. Is sensitive to individual differences and respects the work styles of others. He/she stays aware of technological trends, his/her role in communicating with team members, and seeks ways to harness these activities to improve cooperation.

It is not uncommon for organizations to have different competencies for different levels of leadership (e.g. manager, functional leader, senior leader). It is more common for competencies to remain the same at different leadership levels, but the descriptions – also known as behavioral anchors — will vary based on the level of leadership. It is also not unusual to see individual competencies divided into segments designed to indicate the level of proficiency a person demonstrates within a specific area. For example, does an individual demonstrate underdeveloped, average, or advanced capacity in a particular competency.

Leadership Competency Models

The use of competencies is typically accomplished by the design of a competency model that is considered unique to the culture of an organization and aligned with the organization’s business goals and strategy. These models normally typically segment the individual competencies into type-alike groups and consist of a list of competencies with the corresponding descriptions or behavior anchors. Research suggests that the optimum number of competencies in a model, from a validity and reliability standpoint, is between six and ten. The following are a couple of models that have been used by some well-known organizations. I have not included the behavioral anchors in these models as it would make for a really long blog. IBM’s COMPETENCY MODEL

CATEGORY ONE: FOCUS TO WIN

  • Customer Insight
  • Breakthrough Thinking
  • Drive to Achieve

CATEGORY TWO: MOBILIZE TO EXECUTE

  • Team Leadership
  • Straight Talk
  • Teamwork
  • Decisiveness

CATEGORY THREE: SUSTAIN MOMENTUM

  • Building Organizational Capability
  • Coaching
  • Personal Dedication

CATEGORY FOUR: THE CORE

  • Passion for the Business

3M’S COMPETENCY MODEL

FUNDAMENTAL LEADERSHIP COMPETENCIES Fundamental competencies are those which an individual may possess at the time of hire, but which will develop further as the individual progresses through successive management positions.

  • Ethics and Integrity
  • Intellectual Capacity
  • Maturity and Judgment

ESSENTIAL LEADERSHIP COMPETENCIES: Essential competencies are those that the individual will develop as he becomes responsible for a functional unit or department.

  • Customer Orientation
  • Developing People
  • Inspiring Others
  • Business Health/Results

VISIONARY LEADERSHIP COMPETENCIES: Visionary competencies are those which leaders must possess to assume increased levels of responsibility.

  • Global Perspective
  • Vision and Strategy
  • Nurturing Innovation
  • Building Alliances
  • Organizational Agility

Origins of Leadership Competencies

It can be argued that the concept of competencies traces back to the 1970s. Concern developed at that time about the widespread use of intelligence and related aptitude tests in the workplace. The concern was that these instruments were too far removed from actual leadership practices and business outcomes. The idea took shape that knowledge, skills, abilities, and traits were a more useful and accurate method for measuring leadership abilities. The popularity of competencies gained considerable momentum in the United States in the early 1990s, in large part due to the accelerated pace and complexity of change taking place in many industries and organizations. The notion that leadership roles were a static set of behaviors and responsibilities was challenged by the idea that these roles should in fact be defined in more general terms, thus allowing leaders greater flexibility in roles.

Benefits of Leadership Competencies

The primary benefit of competencies is that they provide an easily shared and understood view of leadership that can be used in a wide variety of ways to build human capital and drive business outcomes. For instance, competencies can provide a unifying framework in such areas as recruitment and selection, leadership development, and performance reviews. In order for competencies to have maximum positive impact it is important that they are designed, introduced, and implemented in a manner that assures widespread support in the organization. It can be a powerful tool for growth and development when a set of competencies is embraced and incorporated into the dominant narratives of the organization.

Critiques of Leadership Competencies

One of the concerns is that the identification of competencies and competency models can be costly in terms of time and money. Some people believe that, when it is all said and done, selection and promotional decisions are rarely made based on competencies, and that it is a waste of time and money to develop and maintain. There is also concern with the efforts of some “experts” to try and arrive at a universal list of competencies – which would then be applied generically without an eye to culture and desired outcomes. Finally, there is some concern that competencies contribute to a culture that overly focuses on the deficits in its leaders rather than identifying and leveraging strengths. It is my opinion that these criticisms and concerns are far outweighed if competencies are designed, deployed, and utilized appropriately.

Do you agree? Do you think too much attention is given to competencies versus such areas as strengths or employee engagement? What are your thoughts, comments, questions about leadership competencies?

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16 Ways to Derail Your Attempt at Building a Performance Culture

A-HR-staff-in-an-office-with-fellow-colleagues

Previous posts have provided tips on overcoming the myth of the paper trail. In an effort to examine this issue from a different angle, below is a list of things that can derail your attempt to create a performance culture.

  1. Save all your feedback on an employee’s performance until the annual review meeting.
  2. Rate an employee higher than they deserve so that they get a bigger raise. (Future post coming on the topic of linking pay to performance).
  3. Rate an employee higher than they deserve because you don’t like negative conversations or because you don’t want the employee to feel bad.
  4. Make the feedback about you.
  5. Only provide negative feedback.
  6. Fail to acknowledge improvements in performance or positive steps toward a goal.
  7. Fail to acknowledge team members who consistently meet expectations.
  8. Providing only one way feedback.
  9. Failing to address issues as they arise. Silence is acceptance.
  10. Allowing bullying or disrespectful behavior or exhibiting it yourself.
  11. Blaming corporate or HR when you provide negative or developmental feedback or consequences.
  12. Failing to explain the business reasons for decisions.
  13. Failing to explain how individual performance helps attain overall objectives.
  14. Failing to develop high potential employees.
  15. Failing to identify high potential employees.
  16. Failing to remain objective even with subjective measures.

What else would you add to the list? Your ideas are always encouraged!

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For more resources, See the Human Resources library.

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Sheri Mazurek is a training and human resource professional with over 16 years of management experience, and is skilled in all areas of employee management and human resource functions, with a specialty in learning and development. She is currently employed as the Human Resource Manager at EmployeeScreenIQ, a global leader in pre-employment background screening.

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Instruments to Measure Post Training Effectiveness

Female-employee-raising-her-hands-to-ask-question-in-a-conference-hall

Evaluation is not just for the trainers and learning professionals, it’s for the adult learner, the middle managers and everyone involved in the process of training and development – Even more important, in today’s recession, training is unfortunately one of the first areas in a business to be trimmed or cut. So we have to have an effective instrument to evaluate post training, showing the people who “hold the purse strings” the value training and development plays in organizations.

Instruments include feedback, Donald Kirkpatrick’s training evaluation model, and Bloom’s taxonomy of learning domains are invaluable in post training evaluation. Here is a that you may want to look at to explore more evaluation tools http://www.businessballs.com/trainingprogramevaluation.htm#workplace_training_evaluation – there are free instruments you can look at too.

Learners and trainers alike benefit from evaluation at the end of training, it is a reinforcement for both parties. As we end the training remember to try and be positive and give constructive criticism try and show the positive outcomes and if there are negative outcomes discuss these in a positive manner.

There are several ways to evaluate training from surveys, interviews, performance reviews etc. One important thing to keep in mind is follow-up, make sure each training is followed up at intervals of 3, 6 12 months and depending on the extent of the training you might want to follow up at 24 months. (This could be useful when doing an ROI).

There are many websites that can help provide templates and such for evaluation just google instruments used in training evaluation and there you go!

Happy training and comments, concerns and guest writers are always welcome.

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For more resources about training, see the Training library.

– Looking for an expert in training and development or human performance technology?
– Contact me: Leigh Dudley – Linkedin – 248-349-2881
– Read my blog: Training and Development

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Thought Leaders Then and Now – Leo Burnett on Marketing

Marketing Thought Leaders and Social Media

Do the core principles of history’s Marketing Thought Leaders still apply to the new paradigms of social media marketing? Here we take a closer look at Leo Burnett and his now worldwide agency.

The quick answer to our question – a resounding YES! ABSOLUTELY. (From the Marketing Hall of Fame):

Social Media Marketing Takeaways include:

  • “Marketing” harmony is a core concept in social media – all strategies and online marketing tools must be considered together, and prioritized, in order to achieve important business goals – including increased revenues.
  • Consumer insight is a founding principle of both the Burnette agency and Web 2.0 – Internet Marketing is USELESS unless you have clearly defined your target customer and attract them where THEY are in social media. (It’s not about YOUR message anymore – it’s all about what THEY are saying. Are you hearing them?)
  • Customer engagement – Burnett’s core beliefs also include: ‘… a message so engaging and human that it builds a quality reputation and produces sales.’ YES YES YES! I especially love the part about producing sales – otherwise, why do it, really? (Traffic conversion into customers is the topic of a previous series of posts on my Marketing Blog.

Burnett Believed in Marketing Harmony

Long before the concept of integrated marketing communications was conceived, Leo Burnett said: “…in its performance, advertising is not a soloist. It is a member of an ensemble of all those activities that can be classified under the general head of marketing, and it must do its part in harmony with them.”

Leo Burnett’s Business Philosophy

“Our primary function in life is to produce the best advertising in the world, bar none … This is to be advertising so interrupting, so daring, so fresh, so engaging, so human, so believable and so well-focused as to themes and ideas that at one and the same time, it builds a quality reputation for the long haul as it produces sales for the immediate present.”

– Marketing Hall of Fame

For more information, see the full article – Leo Burnett on Marketing

What revenue-generating tips have you discovered in Social Media Marketing?

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For more resources, see our Library topics Marketing and Social Networking.

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ABOUT Lisa M. Chapman: With offices in Nashville Tennessee, but working virtually with international clients, Lisa M. Chapman serves her clients as a business coach, business planning consultant and social media consultant. As a Founder of iBrand Masters, a social media consulting firm, Lisa Chapman assists clients in establishing and enhancing their online brand, attracting their target market, engaging in meaningful social media conversations, and converting online traffic into revenues. Email Lisa @ LisaChapman.com

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New Leaders Needed

A-female-team-leader-with-her-fellow-team-members

The days of leaders who can raise productivity and consequently profitability just by ‘managing by walking about’, patting their staff on the back and asking after the dog, are gone.

In fact some would argue that relationship-based leadership was a fad or flash in the pan and now that businesses are in a battle to survive, ruthless tacticians are what’s needed to lead the team. Luke Johnson said in the Financial Times : “It is becoming apparent that many leaders were really just suited to the good times. During a severe recession, when growth is irrelevant and all that matters is survival, their bullish attitude and denial of reality becomes positively dangerous .”

Is Genghis Khan the ideal manager?
Is Genghis Khan the ideal manager?

Let ’s not be fooled into letting the pendulum swing too far however. Continue reading “New Leaders Needed”