Irial O'Farrell's Blog, page 3

The Starting Point of Leadership

Leadership, or the lack thereof, has been receiving a lot of attention over the past year but, let’s face it, it’s a fairly woolly topic.  There’s as many definitions of Leadership as there are people.  Personally, I define leadership as the ability to look forward and clearly see the future you want for your organisation, to communicate this throughout the organisation and to enable people to achieve it.

Of course, notwithstanding differences of opinion, the definition is the easiest part.  How does one actually develop themselves sufficiently to become a Leader?  With a lot of hard work – but, in the meantime, here are three key elements that good leaders develop over time:

Self-Awareness: A good leader has a very honest understanding and appreciation of who they are and what makes them tick.  They are  relatively consistent in both their behaviour and their message and are seldom swayed by the current breeze blowing e.g., they don’t keep changing their minds or take the most expedient route (because it’s easy).

Excellent Communication: Communication is made up of 3 main elements – listening, body language and asking questions.  As the saying goes, a good leader will listen and speak in the same proportion as their mouth and ears i.e., listen twice as much as they speak.  For most people, listening was not a God-given gift so, start practicing your listening skills today.

Combining Self-Awareness and Communication, another aspect of communication is the old chestnut – Actions Speak Louder than Words.  A good leader really understands that people will place way, way, way more emphasis on their actions than what they actually say.  So many Managers seem to think it’s enough to say the words and that people will accept them.  People don’t, they look for the credibility that comes with matching the actions to the words.

Take Time to Reflect: If you’re going to have a vision of the future, it makes sense that you take some time out of the day-to-day and consider what you’re trying to do.  This is not a particularly easy thing to do.  Most people are so busy with the every-day that they don’t have  time to consider the need to step back, let alone do it.

However, it’s important to schedule in time to reflect.  Put it in the diary, go somewhere quiet and start asking yourself questions such as “what am I (we) doing?”, “what am I (we) doing this for?”, “what do I (we) want to be doing?”, “will I (we) achieve that by what I (we) am currently doing?”

Being a leader takes a huge amount of energy and effort, and it can be a lonely place at times, but wouldn’t turning a dream into reality be worth it?  Answers on a postcard, or at least your thoughts in the comments section…

The Thing About Company Culture

I was browsing a discussion board recently and came across a discussion on company culture.  The general gist of one person’s post was that if you can’t feel and touch culture, there’s nothing you can really do about it so get over it and focus on the work. 

No prizes for figuring out that contributor’s “ideal culture” but it got me thinking.  Yes, culture is very woolly and intangible, yet, we can walk into a company and within 5 minutes, we can start to feel its culture (which may or may not match up with the nice Values statement on the wall). 

If I had to define “Culture”, I would define it as “the unspoken rules of how people do things around here”.  It is usually generated from the top down, although within a team or department, a more junior person may have a large impact on the culture (positively or negatively). 

The most concrete evidence that culture exists, though, is how a culture can change with a change in senior management.  One or two personnel changes can make a huge impact and completely change ”the unspoken rules”.  I would like to say that the impact of such personnel changes on culture can be either positive or negative in equal measure but experience would indicate that negative cultural changes seem to sweep in and rapidly set up shop while positive cultural changes creep in and are mistrusted until proven.

The Apprentice …

I don’t know about you but I have to admit that I love The Apprentice.  I love the interplay between different people and I’m fascinated by how the different PMs impact the teams, positively or negatively. 

I’ve been a bit disappointed by the current Irish bunch, though.  There have been some really scary PMs – their approach very much of the “do what I say….NOW” school of management.   As I watch, cringing, what runs through my mind is “where do these people pick up that these behaviours are ok?”  Is this what they see from their managers?  Are companies ok with this?