27 décembre 2009

Emotional intelligence … so important !


While business schools concentrated on a very Cartesian education to build brilliant spirits, we discover again that feelings must not be necessarily banished from the arsenal of the leader.

IQ and technical skills (competency/expertise) are important. No doubt. But emotional intelligence after all is probably the sine qua non of leadership. At least this is my strong belief after years in management. The issue in fact is not to feel emotions. Everybody feels emotions. The problem is more how you can deal with them. How you can use them to your advantage and the one of your company. How feelings can help you to build an actions plan based not only on pure factual elements but also on your own feeling … something you feel may happen. Why? You do not know why. Nor how! Emotional intelligence is about being able to listen people, customers, suppliers, partners and understand how they feel, what they are expected from you and how you can enter into a real teamwork for the benefit of everybody. Emotional intelligence is about being able to take into consideration elements which are not necessarily rational but which justify themselves by the other reasons, the ones that we feel in care, based on experience, know-how and faith.
A lot of research studies are starting to show the existing and direct tie between emotional intelligence and business results. When feelings are taken into account, people surpass themselves which can be seen in business results.
Among qualities traditionally associated with leadership we find intelligence, toughness (we will see later why this one is important), determination or vision. They are important but they are not sufficient to make a leader. The one people will follow without any hesitation, the one that will inspire others in all the sense with commonly put behind the expression “inspiring people”. In other words, these qualities should be considered as a threshold, a barrier that you cannot pass without them. But being a great leader is also about having emotional intelligence which means: self-awareness, self-regulation, ability to motivate others, empathy and social skills (see Daniel Goleman).
Having both a traditional profile plus a strong emotional intelligence does not mean you will be a successful leader. Unfortunately not … or it would be simple. For sure to work things have first to come together. But then others factors play a role like … chance! Let’s admit here that this by nature much more difficult to predict. Indeed we can say who will never be a leader (or with a poor chance to be one) but it is more difficult to know who will be a winner.
As usual please comment in: geraldkarsenti@live.fr

20 décembre 2009

Leadership's styles in the sense of Daniel Goleman (2/2)

Leadership is key for the business world today. Everyone is looking for leaders. When found then you need to think about how to motivate, to develop and to keep them. A long way to go. Let's go further in the leadership styles ...

Last time we described the 6 leadership styles. We also said that each style can be appropriate for one situation but maybe not for another one. Goleman gave some examples. One of the most traditional is to change the leader after a social plan or a strong transformational program, particularly is your intention is to play on motivation and trust to launch some actions to capture growth and market shares. Some acts are disruptive and despite all your efforts to keep morale up, a kind of “rupture” may happen between the leader and the followers with all the obvious consequences. If we can accept the principle of this, we have had many examples where things moved more positively. Some leaders can operate strong performance actions, important changes and still keep confidence throughout the company. It is more a question of style. In fact, I believe you lose people when you seem inequitable (unfair) and/or too hard. Let’s say too extreme. It is important for a leader to find the right balance and then … to balance!
The affiliative style allows promoting harmony, boosting moral up and solving conflicts within teams and/or between people. Those leaders (at least those with a significant portion of affiliative style because everyone should remember we are a combination of different styles) can connect people to each other. They can strengthen connections and have a positive impact on business and/or climate. Authoritative leaders (or visionary) are by nature inspirational managers (see my post on November 8, sorry in French …). They can explain in full details how, why and when people’s efforts can contribute to the dream they are building … they are basically connecting people to a larger story. This is not about short-term objectives, this is about creating something more ambitious (for example: Steve Jobs when back to Apple rebuilt an area of innovation — iPhone, iPod, iMac, etc. — when the success we know). Those leaders have generally an outstanding impact on business and climate and are the primary profile shareholders are looking around to drive business and make turnarounds, as long as you can also manage them when necessary. Most of the time, those leaders are narcissistic in the sense of Freud’s personalities. They have to be coached / mentored to avoid the bad aspects of their drive. We will come back later on this subject, when we will go through the impact of Freud’s theory on leadership. Coaching style is also crucial in the sense that they help people to develop and improve their performance. They also help people to believe in themselves with the impact we know. You can get a lot more from people when they are motivated, when they believe in their company and when they understand why they are working so hard. Democratic leaders are generally looking for consensus, encouraging people to commit through participation and teamwork. Their impact on business and climate is good, but this style should be associated with another one, like authoritative for example. Then the result should be exceptional. Pacesetting managers are generally obsessed by meeting challenges and exceeding goals. They push hard and want to get to high-quality results. If not combined with other styles, their impact should be limited because they are generally too metric focus, never expressing their emotions (or accepting their teams to have some). They will reject anything that is not structured, logical (in their opinion) and not part of a process (the one in which they believe). Nevertheless they are clever guys, always providing a great value to the company. Finally the coercive style comes up. This is a strange one. Those leaders are strong, excessive, pursuing at any price challenging objectives. They are the ones you call when it is about creating a kick-start urgent change or when you have to manage a very tough situation, one that could break your company. Normally, if the leader is a pure coercive you will have to change him after 12 to 18 months, or he will be totally rejected by the teams. But when associated with authoritative style the impact is much better. People can accept tough leaders when they understand the vision and the goals (what the authoritative can bring on the table).
Having these styles in mind, you can then define the overall objectives you are pursuing like: improving the flexibility of your company, increasing the level of delegations and/or responsibility (providing people with more power as long as they keep accountability), improving the way you motivate and reward people for good or excellent performance, defining a business plan (including the business plan, the business model, the value proposition and the mission statement) with clarity, getting commitment from the team, etc.
Having defined your objectives, you can then access each leader in his capacity to reach these goals. This generally results in a set of ratios and graphics that can position the styles of each leader and the related impact on each objective.
I believe this is a strong and efficient tool to understand better the leaders (or future leaders) who work for you as long as you can combine this analysis with a 360° and of course you own experience based on factual things, projects and deliverables.
Leadership is not a science. This may be an art, a process, a bunch of theories in different areas (economy, management, social sciences, psychology, etc.), but certainly not a science. We should not repeat the mistake we have seen in other areas, where to be recognized you have to be seen as a science!!! No, leadership should stay as it is: a huge area of investigation, the barycentre of different disciplines, always in progress, a domain where academic and conceptual staffs are as important as emotional learning. This is why next time we will cover another theory developed by Goleman and others: emotional intelligence.
As usual please comment in: geraldkarsenti@live.fr


14 décembre 2009

Leadership’s styles in the sense of Daniel Goleman (1/2)

Many of you asked me to write articles in English as well. This makes sense and allows an international dialogue, taking into account different feelings and experiences. Indeed I received a lot of emails on geraldkarsenti@live.fr following my messages on leadership. This is a subject that obviously generates a lot of reactions. This is part of our lives, no matter if you are yourself in a position of leading a business or people, at least everyone wants to know how leadership works … is it possible to understand the mechanisms of it … anyway I am not so sure. Leadership could be an art, could be a process, a whole set of rules but in any case it could be considered as a science. Some of us would say: fortunately. Leadership calls to a lot of disciplines: economy, management, human resource, human capital theory, psychology, sociology, etc. This makes this area a very interesting investigation play. Daniel Goleman is certainly one of the most prolific authors on this subject, producing a lot of papers and books, each bringing new concepts and value.



In “Primal Leadership: Realizing the Power of Emotional Intelligence” (2002), together with co-authors Richard E. Boyatzis and Annie McKee, he defined 6 leadership styles. Since then, they have been copied basically by everyone. They became the reference on this crucial subject.
What are the 6 leadership’s styles?
 Affiliative: Creating harmony. Promotes harmony, nice, empathetic, boosts moral, solves conflicts ;
 Authoritative : Providing long term directions and vision; Inspires, believes in own vision, empathetic, explains how and why people’s efforts contribute to the « dream »;
 Democratic : Building commitment & generating new ideas; Superb listener, team worker, collaborator, influencer;
 Coaching : Developing others; Listens, helps people identifying their own strenghs and weaknesses, counselor, encourages, delegates;
 Coercive : Immediate compliance; Commanding « do it because I say so », threatening, tigh control, monitoring studiously, creating dissonance, contaminates everyone’s mood, drives away talent;
 Pacesetting: Accomplishing tasks to a high level of excellence. Strong drive to achieve, high own standards, initiative, low on empathy & collaboration, impatient, micromanaging, numbers-driven.

Key remarks should be made:
1. Leaders gain the best results by using a combination of these leadership styles;
2. Each leadership style is appropriate for some specific business situations ;
3. The more styles you have, the more situations you can manage.
Each of these styles may have a real impact on business, on motivation and can generate a spirit for winning, but the best is certainly to adapt the style of leadership with the goal pursued. Depending on your target (piloting an overall transformation, launching new businesses, managing a restructuration with or no social plan, etc.) you may decide to appoint a specific profile. It is first a question of efficiency. Let's see next time how these styles can affect the different KPIs ("Key Performance Indicators") of the firm.

07 décembre 2009

Le leadership au féminin

En rentrant de Las Vegas, je suis intervenu dans le cadre d’une réunion interne HP France du groupe de réflexion et de travail « Women @ HP ». Nous avons ainsi pu échanger nos vues sur le sujet du leadership féminin, thème qui disons le tout de suite me tient à cœur depuis des années. Je suis en effet convaincu que les entreprises ont tout à gagner à multiplier les nominations de femmes aux postes clés de commandement afin de retrouver un véritable équilibre et profiter des qualités typiquement féminines. Certaines entreprises ne s’en privent pas du reste, je lisais en effet ce weekend dans la rubrique « nominations » d’un quotidien bien connu que le groupe l’Oréal continuait de le faire.
Cette conviction puise sa source dans une longue réflexion, mais aussi dans les actions que j’ai pu mener tout au long de ma carrière. D’emblée, il nous faut admettre que le sujet n’est pas simple. La faible représentativité des femmes au sein des conseils d’administration, des comités de direction ou plus large des équipes dirigeantes s’explique de différentes façons. Aucune ne peut vraiment être résolue par un simple coup de baguette magique. Il faudra du temps …
Dans l’industrie en particulier, l’embauche se fait en grande majorité dans les contingents des écoles d’ingénieurs et des universités scientifiques, là même où les jeunes filles sont sous-représentées. Il faut reconnaître qu’elles préfèrent, et de loin, intégrer les filières commerciales ou les cursus dans les domaines des sciences humaines ou sociales, du marketing ou de la communication. Elles se dirigent par ailleurs, fort logiquement, vers les secteurs du luxe, de la mode et des services. Les statistiques sont là pour le prouver. Il ne s’agit nullement d’une critique, c’est un fait. Une première action, mais qui échappe totalement aux entreprises, serait ainsi d’inciter les jeunes filles à se diriger vers un apprentissage plus scientifique. La recherche est tout aussi gratifiante, sinon plus, que d’autres environnements. Il suffit juste de le dire et de convaincre.
Les entreprises devraient par ailleurs imposer un certain nombre de règles. L’une d’entre elles, suggérée par une collègue, pourrait consister à imposer le nom d’une ou plusieurs femmes dans les listes de présélection lors d’une procédure d’embauche, sous peine de voir les accords de recrutement et la procédure tombés.
Inversement, je crois qu’il serait dangereux d’imposer un système de quotas. Il en résulterait des insatisfactions à plusieurs niveaux, une sorte d’effet boomerang : les femmes auraient le sentiment de ne pas avoir été traitées avec respect, tandis que les hommes resteraient avec le goût amer d’un gigantesque passe-droit.
L’entreprise doit être le reflet de la société. Au vu du pourcentage de femmes aux commandes d’entreprises à l’heure actuelle, nous ne pouvons que mesurer la marge de progrès restant à accomplir.
Il faudra du temps … peut-être ... mais mettons dès à présent toute l'énergie nécessaire. J’ouvre aujourd’hui un débat. Je suis preneur de solutions et d’idées novatrices (geraldkarsenti@live.fr).
D’autres billets suivront sur le sujet …