Schlagwort-Archive: Decisiveness

Pretending to lead

As long as one is mentally stuck in the previous millennium, one tries to ensure an outdated claim to leadership, although we have completely different framework conditions nowadays. More than 7.7 billion people, and over half of them are surfing the Internet. This means that we are only one click away from each other. In the interest of reducing the complexity, the resulting oppressive transparency leads to the formation of information bubbles. This strong networking is not only impacting everyday global life, but also the work within the boundaries of the company. The old head start of knowledge is power is slipping away from managers due to the fact that the sources are available to everyone. When in doubt, employees are better informed than their superiors. The claim to leadership is additionally challenged by new, self-determined approaches of cooperation: agile organization, holacracy, sociocracy, liberated companies. It makes sense that, in this situation, managers are looking for ways to act as if they still pulled all the strings.

If you carefully observe your own environment, you will find everywhere examples of leaders, who no longer know, what their raison d’être is. You can recognize them by the following examples.

  • Simulating decisiveness through goals
    An important function is to decisively set goals and stand up for them. This begins with verbal commitments to a goal: “I am firmly committed to ensuring that we think about how we should get involved in this matter in a foreseeable future.” And extends to targets that are so far in the future that decision-makers will neither take responsibility for the results nor will they even be available – “CO2 neutrality by 2050! “
    This is done in both cases as if something has been decided. In fact, the possible effects of such a decision are uncertain or in the far future, so that the decision-makers cannot be held responsible for the failure.
  • Lengthy alignments
    As the target groups observe every step of the decision makers, it is key to give the impression that one is actively working on a solution. Therefore, the influencing groups should be involved, and work on a consensus in joint discussion sessions. For this purpose, meetings are made on various topics, which should generate written agreements within a week.
    More and more often there is just enough time for a minimal consensus, which, however, requires all participants that they concede certain points. To do this, you have to overrun the timeframe, work in night shifts and then show the result after the deadline has run out. The appearance of effort is thus preserved, and the modest compromise is revaluated.
  • Distraction through finger pointing
    To counter any criticism from the outset, one simply accuses others of providing false information, abusing their power and manipulating the public. That way, the accusations of the opponents are preempted, and puts the ball for the time being in the opponent’s field. If the opponents then justify themselves, the criticism is distracted, and one is seen as a good negotiator.
    Fatally, the reference to smoke suggests the public to believe that there is a fire. Whether invented or true cannot be immediately comprehended. Later rectifications are not able to let vanish the invented facts. It is sufficient to be the first to see smoke.
  • Proclaiming sovereignty
    Professional demagogues eventually use the return to self-esteem. The own opinion is underlined and placed before all other points of view. With America first, this can be implemented, because the message is understandable and desired by the target audience – because they have no idea what it means to them. And since this approach works so well in the USA, others are now starting to catch up. And the people who follow this path celebrate themselves as saviors and strong leaders.
    Sovereignty and exclusion create a sense of “we” in one’s own group that exploits the “We are good – the others bad”. In order to set an effective starting point, one terminates existing contracts and expects at the same time the previous rights – without the corresponding obligations. Your own group pays the bill, as the misappropriated disadvantages only become visible afterwards.

Bottom line: Here, leadership is less an action than a semblance that sets the target groups in motion. After decisions have been made, changes should occur. However, changes are not foreseeable if they are in the far future, if lengthy alignments create an ineffective consensus, if blaming people for the own weaknesses distract and if propaganda fogs the audience. Fatally, those affected do not notice that decisions are being avoided – if you don’t decide anything, you don’t do anything wrong. Hopefully the target groups will wake up from the sleep of the innocent and remember that they are demanding decisions for their own benefit. Pretending to lead is no longer enough.

Real leaders

Even if the society, the economy or the enterprise are blamed for drawbacks, it is always people, who are creating, not necessarily conscious, negative circumstances. Examples are the leaders. The behavior of highly paid superiors is frequently copied by the employees. Since the fish stinks from the head, the negative properties are mainly conveyed.

  • Missing authority of the boss’s results in long-winded decision making.
  • Postponing decisions paralyses progress.
  • Missing goals create contradictory activities.
  • Blindness and deafness to the feedbacks of the employees result in a loss of confidence.

As a consequence, incongruent leadership style undermines the authority and prevents results.

Führungskraft

The employees are asked in the course of the introduction of Entrepreneurship to think and act like an enterpriser. At the same time the leadership positions are reduced to simple steps on the career ladders. The actual task of management goes in this case by the board. Employees have to fill out the role of an ‚executive’ faster than ever before, without being in the position to develop the following characteristics.

  • Power
    The takeover of a team leader position suggests that thereby the necessary power and sufficient resources are automatically available. On the one hand the purely formal transfer of power is not enough in times of increasing employee participation, in order to exert influence as well as to get acceptance and commitment from the employees. On the other hand the higher leadership levels keep the control of the planning and the budgets. Top managers decide nowadays the smallest activities and expenditures personally. For middle management only remains the title.
  • Decisiveness
    An important function of bosses it is to seize the take decisions that cannot be decided on the subordinated level. In the scope of responsibility goals should be specified that fit within the superordinate frameworks. Additionally, alternatives have to be selected, the application of resources controlled, social conflicts dissolved as well as the fundamental structure of the job positions and the procedures defined. In order to fill out the role, the executives need decisiveness. This requires decisions that are made timely and conclusive.
  • Goals
    The published plans are the basis for the staff and the other participants. The goals must fit into the big picture, but they should leave enough flexibility for the activities of the employees. Therefore the executives must make the overview available that shows the direction to the operational activities. Leaders are the specialists for the political aspects, the control of the area, the availability of the relevant information and for the control of cooperation.
  • Attentiveness
    The most important ability of the top management is the attention that is used to observe the occurrences – particularly the observation of the relationships between the employees, between employees and customers as well as between employees and suppliers. They provide the basis for the improvement measures of co-operation. Since these social aspects mostly happen on an unconscious, subliminal level, it needs a lot of instinct based on experience.
  • Style
    There is not the one, right style of leadership, but different approaches that depend on the country-specific culture, the role models of the enterprise and the personality of the leader. This might be authoritarian, democratic or liberal leadership approaches and/or any mixture of the three. It is crucial that the selected style is constantly used. The employees receive thereby an example for their orientation.

You can see in large companies more and more that the executives have promising titles, but do not show in everyday business the above characteristics. This explains the search for trainings concerning charisma, acceptance and commitment. They should enforce the self-confidence of the responsible people. Unfortunately decisiveness does not evolve, if decisions are always made on the superior levels. The ever more evolving micro management results at the same time in the fact that subordinated executives do not reflect any more about strategy, goals and activities in their responsibility. Since guidance in its actual sense does not take place, the question about the personal style of leadership will one day not appear any more, since the high-level executive is lowered to the role of a messenger of the superordinate levels.

Bottom line: The middle management mutate into highly paid employees, who

  • do not have the previous authority,
  • actually don’t need decisiveness,
  • have modest room for acting,
  • distribute only insensitively orders and
  • do not unfold a personal style.

In principle, these are good basic conditions in order to create lean structures. Unfortunately the enterprises undermine these approaches, by proclaiming flat structures. At the same time they create hierarchies that subordinate one executive to another of the same level. Formally, there will be fewer levels, than expected. The resulting ‘kings without land’, who, without budget and power, are not allowed to make their own decisions, turn into shadows of real leaders.