Showing posts with label Result. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Result. Show all posts

Thursday 30 May 2019

Summing up -Leadership Development Process


As we discussed last 35 weeks on developing leadership qualities from “ Inside to outside” perspective, now let us summarise the learnings as a temporary break on this subject.
 
Leadership is all about making a positive impact on others through your thoughts, words, action and delivering result.It is more about Inner strength which will be visible externally through your impact.

Personal leadership is precedent to organizational leadership, and it is the responsibility of an individual to improve his / her personal leadership qualities irrespective of the age, qualification, and position, and this is a continuous journey.
 
Steps in leadership development journey are as follows

Leading Self – (Self image / Taking responsibility/ Discipline / Being grateful / Faith)
Leading Others –( Building Trust / Connecting with care / Enhancing Tolerance/ Improving communication / Earning the respect)
Leading through Results –( Making Impact at self / Developing Thought leadership / Managing Result )
Leading through developing others –(Teaching / Guiding / Giving Feedback / Coaching)
 
The above steps are just an overview of the leadership development process from my perspective, and it is up to an individual to experience the process on his / her own.

Each one of us has the leadership seed internally, and that has to be nurtured with awareness and practices throughout life.

Sunday 17 March 2019

Leading through Result ( Focus on the process)



As discussed, one of the development steps in leadership development is delivering consistent results. The dilemma most of us have is whether to chase the result or the process. To get clarity, we need to understand the law of nature.

"For any effect/result, there must be a cause/process ;
When there is a change in process, accordingly there will be a change in result".


For example, if you want to make the best presentation to your client( Result), many factors contribute to the result. Your presentation content, your body language, your voice quality, the environment in which you present, your client’s interest and so on. When all the process is good, the result also will be good. You may not have control over the result, but you can influence or ensure the process in all factors as much as possible.

When you focus on the process and drive the process, the result may be in your favor
.
Highly effective leaders, always focus on minute things and ensure the factors are always in their favor and eventually they achieve the result they want.

You might have seen some people exist successfully many years in their chosen field like media, sports, business amidst all the competition and turbulence times. You can see a typical pattern in their thought process, that is, continuously develop themselves as a process. When they are changing themselves as a process, the result is also sustainable.

    To sum up, if you want a great result, your process also needs to be different and robust. You can not influence the result, but you can influence the process. More your process is consistent the result also will be consistent and higher level.

Leadership is all about delivering result through the process, not through ad-hoc, shortcut, one-time success !.

Leading through Result- (Managing Expectation)


One of the areas, a leader, need to sensitize is on understanding or managing the expectation clearly from others in a professional environment. When the expectation on the result is not clearly understood and clarified, it leads to disconnect and frustration on both giver and receiver.

In one of my client operations, the business head asked his accountant to help him with P&L analysis of the previous year. The accountant worked through the accountancy software and prepared P&L statement data. With a sigh of relief as he delivered the work on time, he explained the business head the hardship he had undergone to make the report. However, the business head was not happy with the output.

What the business head expected from his teammate was that statement with analysis on what needs to be done to improve the P&L as he thought that information was already available in the software system. His expectation was to get “sensitivity analysis”, whereas the accountant felt that taking summary from the system itself was a significant task and he delivered the result on time.

Here is the issue is lack of expectation management.

We may suggest that communication needs to be improved on both ends. In reality, there is an emerging trend in the professional transaction is to give more value added than stated expectation given the technology, information available in the professional environment. The transaction could be between peers, customer and supplier, employee and employer.

Discounting the fact of communication improvement, the question an individual must ask himself is whether he is making an effort to offer an extra bit of value addition. That will be the starting for leadership development towards making an impact on others!!
 

Thursday 28 February 2019

Leading through Result ( Developing your Thought leadership)


One of the ways to make an impact in your professional environment is by developing thought leadership.

What is meant by thought leadership?

Thought leadership is that you develop expertise in your core functional area or any subject and people in your network always seek your opinion or ideas or your perspectives when they face any problems in the technical domain or subject.
 
That is, Thought leader is one who is “sought after expert”  in a given field or functional domain.

For example,
If people in your network or your organization perceive you as an expert in creative problem solver for any business challenges, they will approach you when they face any business struggles. By making yourself as an expert in any given functional domain, you are making an impact on others, or you are delivering results as a leader in a professional environment.

You might have come across some people as an expert in Tooling, Design, Coaching, Negotiation, Investment, analyst, problem solver and so on. 

You can become an expert in your functional area with systematic effort.
 
How to develop thought leadership in your functional domain?
  1. First, you need to identify your core area or your strength
  2. Polish your knowledge and skill in your core area
  3. Continuously add value to others in your core area, especially in a meeting forum or during the crisis in a professional environment
  4. Over some time, people will identify and associate you with your expertise
Developing thought leadership will pay you in the long run, and the development effort is a continuous effort. You need to invest in you!!!

Monday 25 February 2019

Leading through Result - Impacting others


Having discussed making an impact at self-level on leading, let us examine, how you can make an impact on others in a day to day life.

The others could be your friends, colleagues, boss, and subordinates in a professional setup. The first impact you can make others is that making yourself approachable when others are reaching out. Approachable means, how you are friendly enough and how you care them through listening. It should not be perceived that you need to be available for others all the time and do serve for other’s need. Even if you are not available to others, how politely you are refusing is also a way to make an impact on others positively.

Similarly, when others are approaching you for a solution to problems, how you are guiding with your thoughts or perspective or directing to right sources makes an impact on others.

The point is how you are conducting yourself through eventually make an impact on them about you. Once you make an impact on others through your positive gesture and thought process, any higher level challenges in the organizations can be resolved with your leadership capability.

To sum up, when you are going up the career ladder, you need to make an impact on others through your ease of approach and friendly. This is something experts refer to as soft skills. Once you impact on soft aspects, you can lead in any hard, technical, business challenges!
 

Leading through Result -Impacting Self


The first logical step in delivering a result or making an impact as one of the leadership development processes is to create an impact at self-level through our actions.

Making an impact at self-level:

To gain more influence on others or any decisions you take on a professional ground. First, you need to make an impact at your level.

For example, if you are suffering from some unwanted habits, you need to work on yourself to give up the practice. When you achieve through your willpower, you are making an impact at your level, and this impact will reinforce your leadership capability.

Similarly, if you are the person of coming late for any event, first correct yourself and make an impact on yourself. This impact at your level will bring you more confidence to you when you insist discipline on others.

If you afraid of taking a decision even with given data points, make yourself to break the inner fear and experiment to take a decision and face the consequence. By breaking your limitations, you are making an impact at self. 

Likewise, each one of us has many inhibitions, reservations, doubts, inferiority complex, procrastination and when you work on it and overcome those pulling factors, you are making an impact at yourself. Any positive impact being created by you at self-level will give you tremendous power to lead others.

Identify the limitations which are pulling you down, take action and see the result or make self impact!
 
Let us discuss the ways by which you can make an impact on others in a day to day life in next week!

Leading Through Result



Having discussed some insights on personal leadership and leading others, the next step in the leadership development process is “ delivering results.”

Not only in a professional environment, in any transactions, like in customer-seller, employer-employee, sports, politics, what is being watched out for is Impact or result being delivered consistently.

You could be a person with good value systems, self-organized and good at building an interpersonal relationship with others, yet if you lack delivering impact or result, your growth and leadership development stalled.

You might have observed some people with excellent qualification and attitude, but struggles to go up through career ladder due to lack of delivering expected results or impact in their given role.

When we say result or impact, it could be tangible or intangible. However, people are looking for consistent result or impact from you as a leader in a given role or context.

Some of the areas need to be discussed on making an impact as a leaders

1.Making an impact at self-level and others
2.Thought leadership 
3.Managing expectation on Impact or Result
 
Let us discuss those areas in next week.

Have a great week till then!

Wednesday 15 August 2018

How to accelerate your career growth?


Generally, in our country, we are associating our identity based on our profession. You might have come across retired people also cherish and claim their status based on past professional accolades or achievements only. Even we introduce ourselves to others by quoting what we do. That is inherently we perceive job is essential for self-identity (saints or philosophers are exceptions!) 

Also, except a few who born into a wealthy family, for most of the people, survival, wealth creation, positional status, respect in the family and society comes from the profession only. The profession could be either working self (business)or working for some as an employee. In any way, we get our happiness, wealth, status, lifestyle, practical knowledge, wisdom from work only. Unlike the western style of theory, we can not separate work and life separately. Both are interrelated.

If you take the average life expectancy of a person is 68 years, then likely 50 % of the life time, we are spending our experience with a career and its related activities. When we give 50 % of our lifetime to our profession and all materialistic and personal development occured through the profession, 
how can we accelerate the professional growth in a right, ethical manner so that growth will help you and others?

Many types of research are going on professional or career growth. However, would like to discuss some perspectives on the science of growth in a professional environment 

Generally, the pace of professional growth differs according to one’s educational qualification, exposure to a different learning environment, industry served. However, given the potential, there are TWO FACTORS  as demonstrated by you determines your consistent growth. 



1.Focusing & Producing Results
                AND
2.Building Relationship with others  


You must notice that both factors are equally required for long-term, consistent growth. It is not either or condition but both.

You may relate to your known/senior colleagues who have grown consistently or the person who has not grown in line with their potential.
In case of a slow growth-oriented person, you may realize that either one of the factors was lacking w.r.t reference to their position. Either they might be competent in their functional domain but lacks on soft skills or they are good in dealing with others, but lack of competency or in delivering a result.
In case of consistent growth-oriented persons, you may realize that they had balanced both factors during their career path.

Balancing of what you deliver and how you deliver are equally important when others consider you for next level growth.

For example, if you are a manager, it is expected to produce results as expected at your level and also to behave in a  certain maturity at this positional level. When you lack to produce either result or lack to display some level of relationship maturity, your growth to the next level, say senior manager in a typical case, delays or stops at the manager level only.
The point is you need to balance both and demonstrate what is expected at your existing position decides your next level growth.

Now, the 
action is to look at your career graph, given your qualification, age, years of experience, are you growing consistently? If you answer is "yes", you are balancing both w.r.t to your position and strengthen it further. If your answer is “No,” try to understand where you need to improve either in RESULT or in RELATIONSHIP instead of pointing others.

Let us understand further on the definition of RESULT and RELATIONSHIP and their drivers.



As discussed, one of the factors for accelerating career growth is consistency in result w.r.t to the position. Let us understand the “ expectation on result and enablers of result orientation.”

    One of my known friends was exceptionally done well at a managerial position, and his boss impressed with his performance and elevated to General Manager level. The boss expectation was to develop the business to the next level using the person’s capability. Here the expectation is to deliver business results. After some time, the boss became unhappy with his performance since my friend still behaved and delivered the result as a functional manager. When I observed and interacted with him, I realized, he was not equipping himself for the new set of deliverables.

      Here the issue is conflicting between the expectation vs. reality and no development efforts to improve the performance w.r.t new role. The approach must be the friend must enhance his knowledge, skills, and attitude towards business development and deliver result than being complacent with legacy or functional delivery alone.

      The fact is the RESULT is a  function of your knowledge about your industry, business, customer,  domain expertise, skills and more importantly your attitude in line with your position. When you are growing in your career ladder, you need to equip yourself on knowledge which is required for the job and your perspective. Also, your skills like problem-solving capabilities, communication, decision making also need to be in line with the expectation of the position. To sum up, your 
COMPETENCY has to be enhanced to deliver RESULTS w.r.t your position. When you are not developing your competency, your growth stops.

Hence, enhance your competency to deliver the result as this is the only shortcut for accelerating growth. 

Let us discuss “ Relationship “ factor and the enablers.

As discussed, the other factor for accelerating career growth is “ Building relationship with others”.


When we say a building relationship with others in a professional environment, it is all about how you are relating with others. Equally, how others feel when they approach you,interact and work with you in a professional setup.

Enablers of building a relationship from your end :

Respect others as such and their time  &  privacy
Giving your undivided time  to others when they need (approachability)
Helping others with your presence  or with your competency

How can you develop your relationship quality with others?
1.    Knowing more about yourself
2.    Developing your emotional intelligence
3.    Improving your communication skill as a lifelong exercise
Building a relationship is not a one-time effort. This calls for consistency.

When you are growing in your career ladder, your soft skill in handling people matters a lot along with Performance.

The action is to identify your weak spot in developing a relationship and work on that to accelerate our career growth!  

Accelerate your career by balancing result and relationship!  
 


Friday 5 August 2016

Why do some people struggle for career growth and others not?

    A real fulfillment comes only through career growth. Career growth means an opportunity to make an impact for others through leveraging our potential, position, and competency. Some time we worry too much about the delay in recognition or promotion etc. According to me, those are all temporary in nature and most of the time, it is beyond your control. Whereas career growth is long term, more meaningful to measure and it is predominately influenced by you.

    At any  given point of time, considering your qualification, years of service and perceived potential, look at your career graph, if is well with your expectation, it is fine, if it is not, definitely the reason may  not be due to others  like your organization, boss, colleagues etc..

    In any modern performance management system, two underlying factors are deciding our career growth. One is what you are delivering against the expectation and second is how you are delivering. To put differently, it is a combination of your result and relationship. Those factors are purely under your influence.

To give more perspective, created a video and if you are interested, Pl view and subscribe for more videos on career growth.

https://goo.gl/7uKUqJ