Intergenerational leadership – A marketing furphy?

Australia’s next MasterManager

Adriano Zumbo's V8 cake: Perfect teamwork

As a manager you have to hope your team is not going to be as hard for you to wrangle as an Adriano Zumbo creation is for an aspiring MasterChef.

Did you see that angelic-looking V8 cake on the show last night? For those of you who did not, it was eight thin layers of cake heaven (well, Adriano’s was, anyway!)… eight layers of vanilla used in different ways, with more than 140 ingredients and four hours of cooking.  The picture is to the left and the recipe link is here.

The reason the cake is such a showstopper is that each layer builds on a theme and is very different from the others, but (and it’s a big but*), they are perfectly complementary and would not work nearly so well without the others. Hang on… isn’t that how a team should be?

It really made me think… if managers (and I am one) put as much effort and passion into understanding the ingredients of their teams, how they work together and how they work as a whole, many businesses may just be in even better shape.

I certainly can’t tell you how to do that in one blog post, it takes different combinations of training, personal development, mentoring and coaching, passion and plain old hard work, for different people. But if we think of Adriano Zumbo as manager and cake as team, we can better understand how important care and attention to each element is when you are creating something greater than the sum of its parts.

* Madly trying to avoid a joke about eating too much cake here

Leadership lessons the hard way

Today’s remarkable Australian Labor Party spill shows importance of leadership skills

Labor spill

As today’s dramatic political events unfolded, I couldn’t help but reflect on what we can all learn from them. Let’s face it, while it all made for gripping TV, it’s not an ideal way to win, or lose, leadership. Nonetheless, through a variety of circumstances, I think it has left the nation in a stronger place. Both the defeated and incumbent leaders were stirring in their own ways.

To the lessons from today… let’s start with Kevin Rudd.  His speech of defeat was moving and inspiring. He articulated his vision, the ongoing achievements of his team and what he wishes they did better. He was personal, likeable and I felt like I understood his motivations and his drive to do good for the country, as I have not been able to since his 2007 election. Had he communicated with even half that transparency and passion throughout his term, today would not have happened.

You just can’t get past the fact that a good leader needs to, not only have a vision, but also be able to articulate it and take people on his or her journey.

While Julia Gillard assumes office in a way that I’m sure even she is not pleased with, what an impressive start she made. (And if she can lead the country the way she led that press conference, we have ourselves a leader.)

In her remarks, Ms Gillard set the context (her background), spoke of her values, articulated her vision and started to make changes to some of the issues on the table, most notably the mining tax that was arguably Mr Rudd’s downfall.  She talked of open doors, open minds and collaboration. She took responsibility for her role in the good and the bad of the Rudd Government. It was textbook stuff.

Without wanting to buy into the politics of it all, if Ms Gillard maintains this style, she has a strong chance of gaining a term as Prime Minister in the more traditional electorate-led way. Why? Because today she demonstrated the communication skills of a leader.

In one stunning day, we have seen humility, dignity, gratitude, pride and emotion from Mr Rudd; and sincerity, passion, vision and collaboration from Ms Gillard. We have also perhaps seen the transition from traditional autocratic to modern collaborative leadership styles.

The coming months will be telling as Ms Gillard tries to right wrongs, set her own agenda and shore up support ahead of an election, all while continually communicating her intentions and vision.  It sounds tough, but the presence, impact and leadership skills she demonstrated today may just get her, and the Australian Labor Party, through.

Either way, what a day for Australia. Our children will be lucky enough to never know that the role of our nation’s leader was once gender specific. Nothing is impossible for great leaders… perhaps the biggest lesson of all.

A farmer in the office

Are you an education 'farmer'?

And no, I’m not talking about the person sitting in the cubicle across the way sneaking in a game of FarmVille on Facebook.

I have just watched Sir Ken Robinson’s TED talk titled ‘Bring on the learning revolution!’ and I was struck with his plea for complete educational transformation. Not evolution. Revolution.

Sir Ken is discussing the way we educate our children and I couldn’t agree more.  However, I think his points apply equally well to how we cultivate talent and creativity in adults too.

I heartily recommend you watch the video link posted below. Sir Ken is both elegant and eloquent as he makes his points. But for those of you in a rush, the guts of the argument is that we need to move from systems of industrial education (the manufacturing or industrial model) where we churn people in a linear progression from Kindergarten through to university – to an agricultural model.

Agriculture. It’s a funny word when applied to education. But Sir Ken argues that human flourishing is organic. We need to cultivate the conditions under which it thrives… just like a farmer.

If you are an HR professional, you are in a prime seat to help customise education and training for the people in your organisation. You can be the company farmer. (Like me, I’m sure you’ve been called a few things in your time, but ‘farmer’ is probably a first!)

Please have a look at, and listen to, Sir Ken’s talk. I’m sure you will get something out of it. For me, it’s realising that all our efforts to deliver customised and exciting training to our students are worth it. By harnessing and directing our own passion for learning, we can effect wonderful change in people’s lives.

What does Scooby Doo have to do with leadership?

Have you had a 'Scooby Doo' moment?

Probably the funniest moment of a great speech I recently heard, was when Tyrone Pitsis told an ATA NSW Chapter executive luncheon gathering about his ‘Scooby Doo’ moment. If you’re wondering what he meant by that, the look on Scooby’s face above should give you a clue! To see more, you’ll need to catch Tyrone in full flight some time… something I highly recommend.

While Tyrone was having a laugh about a hiccough along his own leadership journey, I think the overall points he was making are extremely important ones. First, great leaders – and even good ones – make mistakes, dust themselves off, learn from it and keep moving towards their personal and organisational goals. And second, often, if something is worth doing it may not come easily.

Tyrone himself has had a colourful life, filled with challenges and what you might have considered mistakes (at the time). But each of those difficult times and so-called mistakes has contributed to his happy and stimulating life and career choices.

As a result of his own experiences and also his professional research into leadership and management, Tyrone shared with us his 6 key elements of leadership. I found myself nodding all the way through. You can see them either by clicking on the link or I’ll list them at the bottom of this post.

Leadership is so personal and great leadership is hard to define. But I believe it’s one of the most important traits to strive for.  Not everyone is born a leader, but – if you want to – everyone can develop leadership skills that will smooth the way in life and in business.

I’d love to know if you agree with Tyrone and, if you don’t, what you think is instrumental to visionary leadership. How do you define good leadership?

PS – You can read all about Tyrone’s leadership journey here – his tale takes us from life as a young Greek Australian in the rough Newtown and St Marys of the 70s, all the way through to his current role as Executive Educator and Researcher at the Centre for Management & Organisation Studies at UTS.

6 key elements of leadership

1. Lead how you would like to be led
   1. Respect others
   2. Be compassionate
   3. Be passionate, in key roles always surround yourself with passionate people and avoid the ‘yes men and women’
2. Keep your reputation (that is the only thing in your control)
   1. We live in unparalleled conditions of uncertainty, risk and ambiguity. It’s easy to compromise your values, don’t do it, it’s not worth it. Never compromise your values
3. Be liked, be feared but most of all be respected
   1. Create a positive environment to work
   2. Ask powerful questions
      1. Germany has a job title, ‘Director Powerful Questions’; Australia does not
         1. A question: “What service do we provide?”
         2. A powerful question: “What service do our customers want?”
         3. A really powerful question: “What services can we create with our customers both for now and the future?”
   3. Challenge common sense and the structures that lead to it
      1. Just because the world may look flat from where we are standing, it doesn’t mean it is
4. Celebrate ideas, and most of all, people with ideas
5. Invest in knowledge, development and education
   1. Break this Australian propensity to view academic ideas as ‘purely’ academic. The greatest organisations (especially those in Northern Europe), collaborate and involve universities and educational institutions heavily (be it Google with Stanford, Imperial College London, and so on)
   2. What’s worse in your eyes “spending money on people’s development with the risk they might leave”, or “not spending money on people’s development, and have them stay?”
   3. People are not your most important asset, talented people are
      1. The leader develops talent
6. Network (beyond just business networks), and collaborate

Training changed my life

Well, you’d expect me to say that because my business is training. But that’s exactly why my business is training. I could have chosen to sell widgets that make fridges work or business shirts. But I didn’t. I chose management training because, even on a bad day, I can feel like my business is making a difference to people’s lives.

If we’re lucky in our jobs, and we work for a company with a view to learning and development, we have the opportunity to enjoy some corporate training. Other of us elect to fund such training ourselves and do courses, big or small.

Management training ‘Eureka’!

My own training ‘Eureka!’ moment happened during my MBA in early 2003.

A university lecturer and corporate trainer (who now works with academy!) called Tyrone Pitsis was ‘railing from the pulpit’ as he was wont to do during a Managing People lecture.

He asked us if we had the guts to really ask ourselves two challenging questions, questions that have stayed with me a business leader and manager since then.

The first was “how do you know you are a good leader of others?” and the other was “why do people want to work for you?”.

My top two leadership questions

These two questions became light bulb moments for me.

I realised in the first instance that you could never, and should never, be able to answer the first, and that the business of leadership was a journey and not a destination.  True leadership is something to be continually strived for, and it’s different from person to person. Hints you are good, however, come when people actively want to work with you!

To this day, the second question is one that I ask myself many times each week (and I know my partners do too) – and in doing so, I hope we always find new and innovative ways to inspire and engage the people that make our business a success. Sometimes we succeed, other times we are less successful, but thanks to Tyrone I always ask the question. I’m still very grateful to him for that. Being challenged during training has taught me to challenge myself.

So, how has training changed your life? I’d love to see your comments.

Improving Employee Retention Through Training

Improving employee retention through training is a strategic management tactic that is often overlooked. All too often a business assumes giving people a salary raise or more vacation time will create job satisfaction. Instead what happens is the staff adjusts their standard of living to consume the raise and are away from their jobs longer due to the increased paid leave time. They remain dissatisfied while at work.

It is difficult to do any job when you don’t have access to the right training. Struggling through a job, or spending time doing a job wrong, results in frustration and often leads to conflict between employees, and employees and managers. The employees feel as if their employer really doesn’t care enough about the quality of the job being done if they refuse to invest in training. The result is the staff and the employer are unhappy with the results.

Employees that sense a company will not invest in adequate training will seek other employment. Staff turnover is an expensive proposition for a business. Anytime an employee leaves and must be replaced, there is a learning curve for new staff and during the early stages of employment productivity will drop. In addition, the manager responsible for productivity of departmental staff must spend an inordinate amount of time making sure the replacement staff has enough information to do the rudiments of the job. Then the cycle starts all over again.

Training Not for Training’s Sake

Increasing employee retention is possible by providing staff training. But it cannot be training just for training’s sake. Most people who work in a business environment have, at some point, sat through a seminar wondering why they are being forced to listen to information not relevant to their job.

Staff training must be focused, and it must be focused on providing the tools and knowledge staff need to do their job. The training must be relevant on many levels.

• Promote corporate mission and culture
• Increase customer relationship management
• Teach communication skills
• Instruct in use of technology
• Encourage creative thinking
• Develop potential managers

This probably sounds like an ambitious agenda. But an effective training program that is well designed and addresses the very real day-today issues employees must be able to handle to do their jobs well will result in increased employee retention. The reason is quite simple. Well trained employees take ownership mentally and emotionally of a company when they are treated as valuable assets.

Developing an “Our” Organization

Staff who do not take some level of ownership of their place of employment are normally dissatisfied employees who always keep their jobs at an arm’s length so to speak. They never really feel as if they need to be as productive as possible or need to put forth the extra effort good job performance always requires. Eventually it is inevitable these employees will seek another job.

Employee training builds staff confidence, competence and a sense of job ownership. The result is a workforce that is knowledgeable and has a high level of job satisfaction. When someone is satisfied, they will stay right where they are….on the job.