Professional & Management – Page 79 – STL

Everyone talks about leaders needing to have a clear direction, a company vision, compelling goals don’t they – but what if these things were overrated and/or not the only answer?

Here’s more – what if these sorts of leadership and management books were wrong, and something else was needed to get your team on board to deliver the changes your organisation needs.

Leadership habits, and not leadership strategy, might be part of the modern day answer. Here are 3 Powerful Leadership Habits to change your thinking.

Habits seem the new thing, it’s as if the science behind them is a new discovery.

For example, the British Cycling team used habits as an approach to gain incremental improvement. It has been key to their success. Habits has been a consistent approach to improving times, and from this winning medals.

They talked a lot about the process of marginal gain and how to apply it and improve.

How can habits benefit us at work?

Habits can relate to our behaviour and our attitude:-

Our behaviour in what we do each day. We can develop leadership habits to support our success.
Our attitude in terms of always being a learner. It’s helpful to have habits in being curious about how we can improve.

In his book “Atomic Habits”, James Clear has a step by step approach to develop habits. He says they need to be:

Obvious
Attractive
Easy
Satisfying

Making habits obvious, attractive, easy and satisfying is the way to help them become part of your identity – how you do things round here.

Most of us know what happens if our habits do not become part of who we are – our fitness regimes and BMI are quite often examples of when it goes wrong!

In contrast, an example of a good habit here would be to put your swimming costume on first thing to make sure you get to an early morning swim! (It might be a bit uncomfortable to wear it all day otherwise!)

Habits really are something to probe. What might the leadership habits be which would really benefit you to cultivate? How could you make part of your daily practice and an integral part of your identity as a manager and leader?

These are all skills developed on our STL Leadership and Mentoring courses, but first here are three things for you to consider:

Communication Habits
What could you do each day to improve your communication with your team? Could you give more immediate feedback on performance? Could you help your team anticipate and plan by sharing what is coming up or be more proactive generally? These daily communication habits will help your team succeed!
Relationship Habits
Are there tiny things you could do each day to develop, enhance and nurture your work based relationships? Habits that could strengthen their trust and performance? Remembering to say “Happy Birthday”, asking how a sick family member is or how someone’s holiday was can make a big difference to how willing someone else is in supporting your success.
Emotional Intelligence Habits
Could you make it a daily attitude to think about things from the other person’s pair of shoes? Rather than approaching tasks from your frame of reference, could you make it a habit to always listen and ask questions that might be useful for problem solving from their vantage point? You may find this makes a huge difference to outcomes and results.

These tiny changes could build a firm foundation from which you and your team can deliver results.

What would make you want to start today?

Getting The Work Done Willingly And Well!

Practical ways to motivate

Motivation: the art of getting people to do what you want them to do, because they want to do it. Sounds good?

Dwight D. Eisenhower certainly thought so – he said it! Let’s talk about motivation – what can a manager do to motivate the team? To make the team want to achieve the business goals just as much as they do? There are a number of theories around on this topic.

I’d like to focus on motivation at work, and look at the psychologist Frederick Herzberg and his Two Factor Theory of Motivation, which he shared with the world in 1959.

Herzberg found that the aspects of work people considered favourable when they were satisfied with their work, were not the same as those highlighted as sources of dissatisfaction. He referred to them as motivators and hygiene factors:

Hygiene Factors

Hygiene factors at work can be likened to hygiene at home – a source of complaint if not right, but not a reason to get excited. The idea is that hygiene factors will not motivate you, but if they are missing or not right, they cause dissatisfaction.

Examples could be working toilets, comfy chairs, a working heating system, or a reasonable level of pay. If these are not provided, they can be a huge source of dissatisfaction.

As Herzberg discovered, removing the source of annoyance (the toilets are no longer blocked, here’s your chair and the heating’s working again!) does not cause motivation.

The opposite of dissatisfied is not motivated – it’s just no longer dissatisfied (it’s about time, the toilets should never have been out of order anyway!). In summary, we need the hygiene factors to be in place and correct. They’re never going to motivate anybody, but they do have the potential to demotivate.

Motivators

Herzberg’s second set of factors are known as motivators. He argued that active motivation is based around these; they enable people to derive satisfaction from their work and they provide a stimulus to work harder. Here are some examples – which ones can you apply?

A sense of achievement – give the team something to achieve and acknowledge them when they do. Agree SMART goals which are also stretching.
Recognition for the work done – behaviour that is rewarded will continue! Praise them when praise is due. Also provide constructive feedback to help them to do it even better.
A chance to take on more responsibility – delegate tasks as much as possible, to demonstrate your faith in their abilities.
A chance to use their initiative – when delegating a task, where possible try and give them the what but not the how, i.e. specify the end goal but let them decide how they get there. They will feel very involved and the commitment and ownership will be instant.
Doing interesting work – aim to delegate a balanced range of tasks, so they get to try something different. Variety is the spice of life!
Personal growth – ensure the team members have the skill and the will to do their jobs well. Some may have a skills gap. Provide the relevant training so they can learn and develop in their role. Help them to be the best they can be!

A final thought

All of the above sounds good, but it all starts with you. Leading by example is a huge motivator, and is a big focus of our mentoring courses London. Good leaders have willing followers. If you can be positive and enthusiastic about work, then your team can too. But if you can’t, don’t hold your breath!

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