Challenges of Leadership in the Digital Age: leading Millennials

 

The digital age has posed a distinctive set of challenges for leaders in today’s workplace. While technology has changed the way that organizations function, digital age has also shifted the expectations of employees, particularly those of the Millennial generation. Leaders must be prepared to adjust their tactic to leading and motivating this new generation of workers.

Millennials are the first generation to grow up with technology at their fingertips. Therefore, they have become comfortable to the luxury and speed of digital communication, and they expect their workplace to reflect the same suitability. They do not want to be bogged down by bureaucracy or manual processes. They want to work in an environment where decisions are made quickly and technology is integrated throughout the organization.

Leaders must also understand the changing values of Millennials. This generation is driven to pursuit and to make a positive impact in the world, so they want to work for organizations that reflect their values. They are motivated by money although values are first in their mind and if they are not respected, they just leave. They prioritize work/life balance and seek out opportunities to have great times and to develop their skills. They want to be recognized and rewarded for their efforts, and they want to be given the tools and resources to succeed.

Leaders must be able to recognize and respond to those needs of Millennials to ensure their participation and stay with the organization. This means making sure employees have access to enjoyable working environment with the latest technology and platforms to help them be productive and efficient. Leaders must also be able to provide meaningful, consistent and fulfilling feedback to help those employees develop their skills. Finally, leaders must be able to create a culture of recognition and reward to motivate Millennials employees.

Seems that leadership in the digital age is no easy task, but it still can be done. Leaders must be willing to adjust their approach to leading and motivating this new generation of workers in order to remain in organization and help them to grow. By understanding the needs and values of Millennials and providing the necessary leadership, environment, tools and resources, leaders can ensure their organizations continue being competitive in the digital world.

Coach-ability?

Being a teacher and author of the book on leadership my interest was picked up by the article 'Why Leaders Are Easier to Coach than Followers?' published in HBR.  I believe that learning or coaching is something that anybody would like to do. Acquiring new knowledge, learn or improve oneself is something that stipulates survival in the Nature.

The article says “Recent research from PsychTests, however, reveals that followers may not be as compliant as we assume. In a study that measured individuals’ openness to coaching, PsychTests discovered that people who identify as followers are actually less open to coaching than people who identify as either leaders or adapters”. There is a graph within the supporting the claim that in all measured aspects followers performed the worst.

In the research three groups were studied: adapters, leaders and followers. I recognized last two groups but had a problem with the first one – adapters. In the article I’ve learnt that adapters are employees who are versatile, can both lead and follow, and are open to feedback and learning. This is a surprise: what are adapters if they cover both other groups. I cannot see leaders that cannot adapt to environment and change due to required situation (I wrote about this in Sun Tzu wisdom and Leadership). What about followers? Do they not adapt to work, rules and leaders? Both, leaders and followers, are usually most of the time outside their comfort zone when performing their ‘day-to-day’ work, so adaptation is crucial to them.

Why, then, there is another (the third) group?

How to (not) energize the team?

How can a leader create a positive energy and still energize the team even when he is not present or feeling hopeless, angry and demotivated?

I should mention that leading people is not a herding livestock as may be too often in many organizations.

Long ago I had a boss who did precisely that. On our regular staff meetings his “normal” manner was to yell at us. Whoever did not perform according to his way of thinking was immediately rebuked. Once, when we were all gathered together, he started with the account department manager and kept on with his offensive manners from “victim to victim”. Instead of helping to clear or solve the situations he kept accusing people of incompetency.  When it was my turn I stopped him by asking “Hey, we are not stock that you yell on us?”

My question provoked a complete silence and a big surprised shock on my boss’ face. In the moment he regained composure he began to yell even louder. I stood up saying that if he does not change the manner I am leaving the meeting. The answer to that was just another hit: “If you leave the meeting you do not need to return any more!” So I left. A big surprise and shock for others and even bigger for him. My coworkers were more afraid for me than I was while I was leaving the room. Not yet far down the corridor I heard my boss’s voice “Come back immediately!” I kept going to my office. The accountant manager was right behind me telling me to immediately return before I was fired. After a few thoughts I said “I would love to see on which grounds” and sat at my desk.

Leading a team

What comes to mind at the term “team leading?”

If what comes to mind is: define and articulate the objectives and measures; get the right people on — and off — the bus; demonstrate to the team that you are invested in the success; make decisions; if you aren't asking people to do something, they won’t do it - you definitely  come from MBA program.

Ask notable innovation leaders what they think about traditional management practices (those taught in a typical MBA program) and you’ll likely get some pretty strong reactions. Intuit co-founder Scott Cook “When MBAs come to us, we have to retrain them fundamentally -nothing they've learned will help them succeed at innovation” wrote Nathan Furr and Jeffrey H. Dyer in their HBR December 2014 issue article “LEADING YOUR TEAM INTO THE UnKNOWN.”

In my previous blogs I've already proved several times over that leadership is not an easy task. It takes all of your personality and more. Team members need to have a sense of who you are. As a leader you are building relationships with your team members. That means you should behave “appropriately” and show your values, the way you think, how you make decisions, what your definition of success is, how you measure performance, how you expect them to work, and you have to gain their trust in your leading. Yes, you need to gain authority, but it is also important to trust the team with control over their work. A leader who gives his power to others can be more influential and motivating than the one that doesn't. When you empower someone, you're actually demonstrating that you trust.

Labeled leadership

“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet” (Shakespeare).

Giving names or labels to differentiate leadership styles today is a huge business of how to invent and make up names and buzzwords from what should be part of normal human relationships between leaders and followers.

In my search for different leadership styles I was astounded by the fact that most of the times there is a unification of two important, but different, roles: management and leadership. In my blogs: Leader vs. manager, To manage people, To lead people I have already explained the issue and am not going to repeat it here again.

I am astonished that there are more than 20 different styles for just naming ‘different’ leadership approaches. Of some of them I have written in previous posts (Servant leadership, Authentic leadership, Charismatic Leadership, Transformational Leadership, Participative Leadership, Humble or Agile Leadership so here I’d like just to mention some more “styles” that are floating around: autocratic, coaching, laissez faire, quiet, situational, visionary, transactional.

Well, do we need so many of them?

Leadership and behaviors

This post I dedicate to certain behaviors of a leader that mostly all of us should be familiar with. The greatest challenge lays almost always in how to recognize and distinguish them. We may assert that “ill” manner of behavior creates poor business culture (e.g. Enron, Lehman Bros, etc.) which leads to poor business performance and output. But what kind of a manner is “ill behavior”?  Ever heard of badmouthing colleagues, taking credit for other people’s work, lying about skills and experience or hiding mistakes, cutting corners?

Leaders today talk a lot about loyalty, retention, business values, of empowering employees, changes in compensation structures to gain flexibility in work schedules, of team building etc. as behaviors needed for great performance of employee. This raises a question whether in any relationship the behavior is completely reciprocal? I don’t believe so, because one party always wields more power over the other. The example may be obvious already in US: workers these days are all multitasking and happy to have the job. They are certainly not going to complain if they work 10 to 12 hours per day without being paid for the extra time.

Some of us may have already experienced a so called ‘sleeping management’ that suddenly wakes up and demands to do ‘now’ for a work to be done ‘yesterday’.

Can such behavior bring or increase loyalty and engagement in the workplace? In a positive corporate culture extra work is a signal to hire extra personnel or part timer or maybe improve planning and performance approach.

Humble or Agile Leadership

So far I have explored several types of leadership and what constitutes them. This post I dedicate to another two leadership styles that, considering their terms, could not have anything in common.

The first is ‘humble leadership’. In the dictionary humble means ‘having or showing a modest or low estimate of one's own importance.’ Well, hard to imagine a leader that has low estimate of his/her importance and leads well. But let’s see how different sources define it:

• ‘humility means being honest’ - why then do we have two words? 
• a study on ‘humble leadership’ states that “when employees observed altruistic or selfless behavior in their managers … they were more likely to report feeling included in their work teams.” OK, I’m not to repeat again and again that management is not leadership, but would still point out that a leader that has emotions would surely have the same results. It is not about humbleness but emotions –Goleman would probably agree.
• another research found out ‘that managers who exhibit traits of humility—such as seeking feedback and focusing on the needs of others—resulted in better employee engagement and job performance.’ 
• Feedback is definitively not correlated with humility but rather with empathy and professionalism. 
• the important attributes that a ‘humble leader’ has to have are: engage in dialogue, not debates; admit mistakes; embrace uncertainty and accept ambiguity; be open to others’ opinions; let people do their jobs; be balanced; secure and recognize. The very same attributes we have already seen in other styles of leadership.

Transformational Leadership

My quest for different types of leadership brought ‘transformational leadership’ to my attention. The concept was initially introduced by James MacGregor Burns, a US presidential biographer, to be defined as "leaders and followers make each other to advance to a higher level of morality and motivation".

‘Transformational leadership’ is described as:

• a type of leadership style that can inspire positive changes in those who follow;
• a role model for followers;
• puts passion and energy into everything;
• inspires, sets clear goals, high expectations and "walks the walk";
• does not only challenge the status quo but also encourage creativity among followers;
• offers support, recognition and encouragement to individual followers;
• stirs the emotions of people and gets people to look beyond their self-interest
• those kind of leaders have a clear vision and are able to articulate it to followers;
• always visible and will stand up to be counted rather than hide behind their troops;
• able to prevent employees from being excessively reliant on their bosses;
• take and provide feedback;
• those leaders are good communicators;
• cultivating staff  to feel empowered and self-guided.

Rather a long list but, if you’ve read my previous posts Servant leadership, Authentic leadership, Change leadership and  Charismatic Leadership, you have already detected some notions of parallelism in all those “different” kinds of leadership.  On those I’ll dedicate one of my future blog posts.

Atypical views on Leadership - 1

An outstanding Leadership for cross cultural team(s)

Have you met a person that was thinking in a completely different way to yours? What kind of impression does it leave on you? Do you dismiss it immediately, or you find it worthy, erroneous  …? 

For me it is exciting, definitely because my life path is somehow atypical, too. In our core we people are similar no matter where we come from. Not long ago I had a TEDx talk about the human behavior that surpasses “the cultural background noise” – “the noise” that accompanies us throughout our life and normally influences our values, ethics and morals, mentally and subconsciously. Unfortunately, this kind of reasoning I find that is still missing in common stances and leadership practices. Let me try to show some examples which are going to be based on atypical views.

From the management’s perspective, managers perform tasks, manage people and do business. Accordingly, there are numerous methodologies and tools helping to manage business and people: Just In Time Production, Kobayashi’s 20 keys, Six Sigma, Business Process Reengineering … to name some. In business environment, do all these methodologies and tools really come out the way we need them to? Current economic and financial situation makes us doubt it. If these tools were as efficient and as great as claimed, then we should not see companies struggling and vanishing. Why it is then so?

Leadership attitude

In last two posts I have written about the difference between two, many times interchanged, organizational functions that are necessary to any organization: management (To manage people) and leadership (To lead people). As there is more to both of them, here I’d like to share with you some more of my views on leadership attitudes, the ones that I consider important.

Many of you will agree that leadership is more about who the leader is than what he/she is actually doing. Therefore, we may assume that the attitude is important when influencing, impacting and leading people.

To lead people

Have you heard of many great managers of the past? Probably much less than about great leaders. That is why “to manage” and “to lead” are two distinguishing roles. They are both needed in society and organizations.

The verb “to lead” has a great history down to the philosophical writings from Plato's Republic to Plutarch's Lives in which he explored the question “What qualities distinguish an individual as a leader?” In one of my previous posts “China’s history and culture impacting Leadership – 1” (and following ) I've written about the Far East’ perception on leadership. And what internet has to say about the verb “to lead”?

The Free dictionary 

• To show the way to by going in advance
• To go first as a guide.

MerriamWebster 

• To direct on a course or in a direction
• To guide someone or something along a way.

Dictionary.com 

• To go before or with to show the way; conduct or escort: to lead a group on a cross-country hike
• To take the initiative; begin.

To manage people

I've learned that the verb “to manage” comes from the Italian maneggiare (to handle, especially tools), which derives from the Latin word manus (hand). So I've searched dictionaries and Internet and come with broader definitions of the meaning of the word:

The Free dictionary:

• To direct or control the use of; handle: manage a complex machine tool 
• To direct the affairs or interests of: manage a company; an agency that manages performers

The Merriam Webster:

• To have control of (something, such as a business, department, sports team, etc.)

The Dictionary.com :

• To dominate or influence (a person) by tact, flattery, or artifice: He manages the child with exemplary skill.
• To handle, direct, govern, or control in action or use: She managed the boat efficiently.

Leadership and public speaking

Is it necessary for a leader to be a good public speaker?

There shouldn't be any dilemma about the answer to the above question. Leader talks at team meetings or presents a company facing internal or external audience. And especially with the latter good public speaking skills can open doors, whereas poor ones will most probably close them. And leaders are not the only one.

Does there exist “a magic formula” for good public speaking? No, there is no magic to successful speech, in fact, everyone is unique and has different strengths that can be used. But nevertheless some guide lines can be offered if you would like to have a winning speech.

Learning Leadership from Martial Arts - III

Let me continue this blog miniseries with a leadership methodology.

In one of my previous posts - “The Way” of Leadership I compared two fundamental Chinese philosophies Daoism and Confucianism, the Yin and Yang of Chinese culture. They are well routed in Chinese everyday life, culture, politics and as well in martial arts of which two Wing chun (blog Wing Chun basics 4 Leadership) and Tai Chi (blog Tai Chi Quan Leadership)  I already explained. These philosophies are used as a background to describe ideas on how to use old martial arts wisdom, explained more in previous blog (Learning Leadership from Martial Arts – II), and are now transformed in a leadership.

• Control: We said that only when relaxed a person may possess a self-control. A wise leader, for that matter, creates an atmosphere of clarity, of purpose and a sense of unity. Leader works selflessly and simply allows the team to do what needs be done. Through self-control a leader can influence (control) the outcome and not directly the people.

• Trust: The saying we used in martial arts was about trust in practice. A good leader understands the processes in the team and the fact that leadership does not require the application of force or pressure. There is no room for mistrust either. A remarkable leader trusts his/her people and is consequentially trusted by them. A well led team is not a battlefield of egos, as in teamwork there is no place for individual ‘victories’ or ‘defeats’.
• Stability: Being ‘on the ground’ (well grounded) reflects our terms and our values -- those that a leader expects from subordinates. A respectable leader is focused, firmly and confidently on the ground with his/her decisions and with clear aim in the mind. He does not flip-flop his decisions.
• Adjustment: if you drive yourself too much, this does not produce fruit, if you try to rush into things, this does not lead anywhere. The same is true for leading a team. If the leader is too aggressive, subordinates ‘are suppressed.’ If a manager is too soft, he is not taken seriously. A virtuous leader adjusts correctly to the circumstances and leads by example.

EGO and Leadership?

“The ego” – a positive or a negative feature? Is it a necessary ingredient, an essential to had by an exceptional leader?

We all seem to be able to spot a strong ego in others. Brain studies cannot point to the place in a brain where ego could exist, what could it be? Outside of a few technical papers ego, is still a very poorly defined concept. Animals don’t have it, for them it is only an awareness of self. Studies show that awareness of ‘self’ in humans is allocated to the left brain. Could this be the ‘true’ place for our ego?

A research showed that at least 99% of all human problems are caused by the false opinion of ‘self’. The most obvious and known falsities are about our perceptions of doing right to environmental, in economic and in political issues. There are others false opinion like the ones generated among and within families, different groups or societies, friends and enemies. But does a self-important demonstration of power or ego always give the result one expect by being egocentric? I’m positive that in most cases it does not.

The ego presents one of the biggest barriers for people to work together effectively. When people get caught up in their egos, it erodes their compatibility, emotions, reasoning. It blurs the understanding and cooperation. And we mostly get just the unproductive clash of egos.

IQ & EQ for Leaders

Human beings are complex integrated systems. It is hard to define them by some theoretical calculations as hard as it is to quantify demanding processor’s unquantifiable actions. Nevertheless I teach my students two measures commonly used to explain humans and their roles in leadership.

IQ (intelligence quotient) is representing a person’s reasoning ability (measured using problem-solving tests) calculated by a mathematical formula that is supposed to be a measure of a person's intelligence. The quotient is traditionally derived by dividing an individual's mental age by his chronological age and then multiplied by 100 (thus IQ = MA/CA x 100) to get the statistical norm or average taken as 100. The most direct ancestor of today's intelligence tests was developed by Alfred Binet. He did it due to a request of an education commission in France in order to distinguish some intellectually impaired children from other intellectually normal ones. Later on Binet’s intelligence test was revised extensively to get the today's version of IQ by Lewis Terman.

EQ (emotional intelligence) is the level of your ability to understand other people, what motivates them and how to work cooperatively with them. It is a combination of: Self-awareness - the ability to recognize an emotion as it happens; Self-regulation – having a control when one experiences emotions; Motivation - one achievement that requires clear goals and a positive attitude; Empathy - the ability to recognize how people feel which is important to success in your life and career; Social skills - the development of good interpersonal skills which is as well tantamount to success in your life and career.

MARSocial copetition: Leadership by Virtue

My book excerpt from “Leadership by Virtue” available on AMAZON.COM (Chapter 6, pages 117-120 of 539 p.) is entered into the Marsocial.com Author of the Year Competition                        Please Click the link and like, shares it. Thank you.

As for Shifu’s words, Tara asks Ben if he has seen a monster

 Culture sophistication of employees pressures on realization of decisions

 Leadership cannot really be taught. It can only be learned. (Harold S. Geneen)

The words “If you do not handle your time, how can you manage the time of the people you lead” from yesterday evening echoed in my ears through the night. And still now I cannot forget them. It is very true, and I feel that I need some guidance about how to overcome these rapidly evolving events that are consuming me and my energy. Drinking tea in my office and shuffling through my e-mail, I just cannot get rid of Shifu’s words. Where is the key that will unlock the doors that will allow all the negative energy accumulated in these two companies to exit? It seems to me that even an exceptional martial artist could not fight through all this piled-up problems.

I don’t even hear it when Gemini enters with the report I asked for about all those subsidiary companies and our ex-employees working in them mostly for FixCom. She starts to explain the background and the concerns she has if we cancelled contracts with companies right now. I agree with her and ask her if she can prepare a plan to pass important services to a new company smoothly and then to pass other less important services that are not our core business and do not bring high value added on to those companies. The plan should include the costs and people involved, and we can have preliminary discussion about it today at the merge meeting. I inform her that we will have this on the agenda of our first directors’ board meeting in two weeks.

Fedor enters with a smile on his face. This should be a good sign. And it is.
“Hi, Ben. I have the papers with me.”
“Make it good news, please.”
“It is. We finally entered all the data yesterday evening and tested them with the new SW module. This morning we cleaned the errors and ran them again through the system and the results are here.”
“That is great, and I should apologize for being rude to you yesterday.” It is a relief to say these words that I truly mean. Finally, a positive effect offering me proof that I’m steering the problems correctly.
“No problem. I understand the pressure on you, and we did not help you much to overcome them. Would you like to see the results?”
“Yes please, but first let us call Dylan too.”
“I already informed him, and he is on his way up here.”
Dylan arrives a few minutes later, and we have a long presentation and Fedor’s explanation of the data. It is half past nine when we are through, and I shock them by saying, “Would you mind if I leave now and you two carry out the meeting?”
“Something more important?”
“In some ways, you could say yes. But please can you inform me about the results afterward?”
“Is she young?” was Fedor’s provocative question.

Interested? READ MORE HERE.

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Organizational success and failure

An organization exists because of participation of employees who work in it. It is like a living organism: the brains are represented by the board of directors; vital organs are main managerial posts. The rest are employees. However, when one organ fails in a human body it is a problem for the whole body. If it works perfectly, the importance of each and every part goes unnoticed.

The organizational success or failure is hardly a one man game. The days of a single great decision maker at the top have shifted to strong decision making skills at all levels and across groups. No organization succeeds or fails based on the responsibility of only one individual. Yes, the leader holds the power to make the decisions and has the ultimate (not sole) responsibility. But a leader can only be held responsible within a reason for that which was in his/hers control.

We know today, supported by research, that the capacity to exercise control does enhance results. Also well explored is the fact that a company's culture is pushed down from the top. Companies that have failed, such as ENRON, have had management that abused the trusted power. The employees simply did what they were told to do. This proves to be a rigid culture lacking of transparency game. Another example of a rigid culture and leadership vision deficiency can be perceived in Kodak’s case where leadership somehow didn’t notice the shift coming in the technology related to films used for photographs.

Middle manager and leadership

There are many different roles in a work environment, but those that stand out and are most visible are the roles of leaders and managers that represent the company, specially the top ones. Readily available are numerous articles describing their role and their way of leading /managing people. Mostly described as a workforce are those on the hierarchy bottom: they work as they are told to. Here, I’d like to challenge your opinion whether they represent ‘the cost’ or ‘the asset’ of an organization. In between there is a number of intermediate managers being subordinate to the senior management but above the lowest levels of operational staff.

Duties of a middle management typically include carrying out the directives of senior management at the operational level, supervising subordinate managers and employees to ensure functioning of the organization. Middle managers are rarely a prime focus during the changes in the organizations because they are badly needed in order to execute whatever upper management comes up with. Since companies have slimmed down and cut out many organization levels they lack of the career advancement opportunities. In reality they are mostly the physical embodiment of the culture or rather bureaucracy level of an organization.

External and internal control

“Please contact my secretary to find the time in my schedule, I’m over booked…”  Have you ever heard a similar from an important CEO or other top manager? He/she is obviously under the time pressure, a stress situation or … If this happens frequently it is normally understood that such people don’t have free time.

In my post Cause and consequence / Urgent and important the pressure because of mainly dealing with urgent instead of important issues was already discussed. To further it, concentrate on the next problem, well described by Zhuāng Zǐ proverb: “If you cannot even govern your own self, how can you govern the world”.

How true and how often we do ignore it? When under the stress a basic martial arts skill is to control and not to fight emotions that are piling up. First try to ascertain what you sense or feel. Then do some concealed relaxation breathing to relax the tension.