Properly Allocate And Deploy Talent

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Varun agarwal

Introduction:

Leadership is a learned deed that becomes unconscious and automatic over time.  For example, leaders can make several important decisions about an issue in the time it takes others to understand the question. Many people wonder how leaders know how to make the best decisions, often under enormous pressure. 

The process of making these decisions comes from an accretion of experiences and encounters with a multitude of difference circumstances, personality types and unforeseen failures.  More so, the decision making process is an acute understanding of being familiar with the cause and effect of behavioural and circumstantial patterns;  knowing the intelligence and interconnection points of the variables involved in these patterns allows a leader to confidently make decisions and project the probability of their desired outcomes. The most successful leaders are instinctual decision makers. 

Having done it so many times throughout their careers, they become immune to the pressure associated with decision making and extremely intuitive about the process of making the most strategic and best decisions. This is why most senior executives will tell you they depend strongly upon their "gut-feeling" when making tricky decisions at a moment’s notice.

Beyond decision making, successful leadership across all areas become scholarly and instinctual over a period of time. Successful leaders have learned the mastery of anticipating business patterns, finding opportunities in pressure situations, serving the people they lead and overcoming hardships.

The leadership model of "strength" implies something very different. Strength is internal versus the external. Strength is what you have inside, not what any outside agency promoted you to/position. Strength is not dependent on any position, whereas the concept of strength implies not what you can do to others; but what you can create from your own resources. Where power sometimes motivates people through fear, strength leads people through inspiration. Strength connotes charisma & attractiveness. People more naturally follow a strong person. They are motivated to act by something beyond that person's title.

As a leader, one might need to form a matrix team, lead one, or simply be part of one. Matrix teams include work groups, cross functional teams, task forces, problem solving teams, committees, special project teams, etc. They are normally composed of a small number of people from different departments, functions, or organizations who have banded together to solve a common problem or achieve a goal through collaboration. And as growing a team has indicated, what differs a team from a group is the ability to achieve much more through the use of knowledge and skill sharing.

Some organizations have working groups that call themselves teams, but their work is produced by a combination of individual contributions. Teams produce work that is based on alliance and combined effort.

If you are looking to advance your career into a leadership capacity and / or already assume leadership responsibilities – here are 15 things you must do automatically, every day, to be a successful leader in the workplace:

1. Make Others Feel Safe to Speak-Up:

Many times leaders intimidate their colleagues with their title and power when they walk into a room.   Successful leaders deflect attention away from themselves and encourage others to voice their opinions.  They are experts at making others feel safe to speak-up and confidently share their perspectives and points of view.   They use their executive presence to create an approachable environment.

2. Make Decisions:

Successful leaders are expert decision makers. They either facilitate the dialogue to empower their colleagues to reach a strategic conclusion or they do it themselves.  They focus on "making things happen" at all times – decision making activities that sustain progress.   Successful leaders have mastered the art of politicking and thus don’t waste their time on issues that disrupt momentum.  

3. Communicate Expectations:

Successful leaders are great communicators, and this is especially true when it comes to "performance expectations." In doing so, they remind their colleagues of the organizations core values and mission statement.

4. Challenge People to Think:

The most successful leaders understand their colleagues’ mindsets, capabilities and areas for improvement.  They use this knowledge/insight to challenge their teams to think and stretch them to reach for more. These types of leaders excel in keeping their people on their toes, never allowing them to get comfortable and enabling them with the tools to grow.

If you are not thinking, you’re not learning new things. If you’re not learning, you’re not growing and over time you are becoming irrelevant in your work.

5. Be Accountable to Others:

Successful leaders allow their colleagues to manage them. This doesn’t mean they are allowing others to control them, but rather become accountable to assure they are being proactive to their colleagues needs.

Beyond just mentoring and sponsoring selected employees, being accountable to others is a sign that your leader is focused more on your success than just their own.

6. Lead by Example:

Leading by example sounds easy, but few leaders are consistent with this one.   Successful leaders practice what they preach and are mindful of their actions.

7. Measure & Reward Performance:

Great leaders always have a strong "pulse" on business performance and those people who are the performance champions. Not only do they review the numbers and measure performance ROI, they are active in acknowledging hard work and efforts. Successful leaders never take consistent performers for granted and are mindful of rewarding them.

8. Provide Continuous Feedback:

Employees want their leaders to know that they are paying attention to them and they appreciate any insights along the way.  Successful leaders always provide feedback and they welcome reciprocal feedback by creating trustworthy relationships with their colleagues. They understand the power of perspective and have learned the importance of feedback early on in their career.

9. Properly Allocate and Deploy Talent

Successful leaders know their talent pool and how to use it.  They are experts in activating the capabilities of their colleagues and knowing so as when to deploy their unique skill sets given the circumstances at hand. 

10. Ask Questions, Seek Counsel:

Successful leaders ask questions and seek counsel all the time.  From the outside, they appear to know everything, yet on the inside, they have a deep thirst for knowledge and constantly are on the lookout to learn different new things because of their commitment to making themselves better through the wisdom of others.

11. Problem Solving:

Successful leaders tackle issues head-on and know how to discover the heart of the matter at hand.    They don’t procrastinate and thus become incredibly proficient at problem solving; they learn from and don’t avoid uncomfortable circumstances.

12. Positive Energy & Attitude:

Successful leaders create a positive and inspiring workplace culture.  They know how to set the tone and bring an attitude that motivates their colleagues to take action. As such, they are liked, respected and strong willed.  They don’t allow failures to disrupt their momentum.

13. Be a Great Teacher:

Many employees in the workplace will tell you that their leaders have stopped being teachers.   Successful leaders never stop teaching because they are so self motivated to learn by themselves.  They use teaching to keep their colleagues well-informed and knowledgeable through statistics, trends, and other newsworthy items.

Successful leaders take the time to mentor their colleagues and make the investment to sponsor those who have proven they are able and eager to advance.

14. Invest in Relationships:

Successful leaders don’t focus on protecting their domain – instead they expand it by investing in mutually beneficial relationships. Successful leaders associate themselves with. Leaders share the harvest of their success to help build momentum for those around them.

15. Genuinely Enjoy Responsibilities:

Successful leaders love being leaders not just for the sake of power but for the meaningful and purposeful impact they can create.   When you have reached a senior level of leadership but it’s all about one’s ability to serve others and this can’t be accomplished unless you genuinely enjoy what you do. Leaders serve as the enablers of talent, culture and results.

Leadership Grid

Most people fall somewhere in between the middle of the two axis. We come up with four types of leaders:

Authoritarian — strong on tasks but weak on people skills

Country Club — strong on people skills but weak on tasks

Impoverished — weak on tasks but weak on people skills

Team Leader — strong on tasks but strong on people skills

Authoritarian Leader (high task, low relationship):

Leaders who get this rating are very much task oriented and are hard on their workers. There is little or no allowance for cooperation or collaboration. Heavily task oriented people display these characteristics: they are very strong on schedules; they expect people to do what they are told without question or debate; when something goes wrong they tend to focus on who is to blame rather than concentrate on exactly what is wrong and how to prevent it; they are intolerant of what they see as dissent, so it is difficult for their subordinates to contribute or develop.

Team Leader (high task, high relationship):

These leaders lead by positive example and endeavour to foster a team environment in that all team members can reach their highest potential, both as team members and as people. They encourage the team to reach team goals as effectively as possible, while also working tirelessly to strengthen the bonds among the various members. They normally form and lead some of the most productive teams.

Country Club Leader (low task, high relationship):

These leaders primarily use reward power to maintain strict discipline and to encourage their team to accomplish the goals. On the other hand, they are almost incapable of employing the more punitive coercive and legitimate powers. This inability results from fear that using such powers could jeopardize relationships with the other team members.

Impoverished Leader (low task, low relationship):

These leaders use a "delegate and disappear" management style. Since they do not commit to either task accomplishment or maintenance; they essentially allow their team to do whatever it wishes and prefer to detach themselves from the team process by allowing the team to suffer from a series of power struggles.

However, do not entirely dismiss the other three. Certain situations might call for one of the other three to be used at times. For example, by playing the Impoverished Leader, you allow your team to gain self-reliance. Be an Authoritarian Leader to in still a sense of discipline in an unmotivated worker.

Power:

Power is the ability to influence others. One of the most influential theories of power Comes from the work of French and Raven, who attempted to determine the sources of Power leaders use to influence others. French and Raven identified five sources of power that can be grouped into two categories: organizational power (legitimate, reward, coercive) and personal power (expert and referent). Generally, the personal sources of power are more strongly related to employees’ job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and job performance than are the organizational power sources. One source of organizational power—coercive power—is negatively related to work outcomes.

However, the various sources of power should not be thought of as completely separate from each other. Sometimes leaders use the sources of power together in varying combinations depending on the situation. A new concept of power, referred to as "empowerment," has become a major strategy for improving work outcomes.

What comes to mind when you think of the term "power"? Does it elicit positive or negative feelings? In both research and practice, power has been described as a dirty word. Consider the Enron scandal. Certainly it is easy to think of leaders who have used power for unethical or immoral purposes (Brown, 2006; Flynn, 2011; Price, 2009). That said, people who have power, deny it; people who want power, try not to look like they are seeking it; and those who are good at acquiring it are secretive about how they got it (Robbins & Judge, 2011).Great leaders have the following in common: they have a vision to achieve large scale ideas that they dream of accomplishing, and they have the personal power to enact it.

Power is a natural process in the fabric of organizational life. Getting things done requires power. Every day, managers in public and private organizations acquire and use power to accomplish organizational goals. Given that, you need to understand how power is acquired, know how and when to use it, and be able to anticipate its probable effects. The concepts of power and leadership are closely linked. Leaders use power as a means of attaining group goals. By learning how power operates in organizations, you will be better able to use that knowledge to become a more effective leader. In its simplest terms, power is the ability to influence someone else.

Sources of Power in Organizations:

Where does power come from? What gives a person or group influence over others? More than 50 years ago social scientists John French and Bertrand Raven (1959) proposed five sources of power within organizations: legitimate, reward, coercive, expert, and referent. Many researchers have studied these five sources of power and searched for others. For the most part, French and Raven’s power sources remain intact.

Legitimate Power:

Legitimate power is a person’s ability to influence others’ behavior because of the position that person holds within the organization. Legitimate or position power, as it is sometimes called, is derived from a position of authority inside the organization, often referred to as "formal authority." That is, the organization has given to an individual occupying a particular position the right to influence—direct—certain other individuals. Those with legitimate power have the understood right to ask others to do things that are considered within the scope of their authority. When a manager asks an employee to work late to complete a project or to work on one task instead of another, he or she is exercising legitimate power. Managers can enhance their position power by formulating policies and procedures. For example, a manager might establish a requirement that all new hires must be approved by said manager, thus exercising authority over hiring.

Reward Power:

Reward power is a person’s ability to influence others’ behavior by providing them with things they want to receive. These rewards can be either financial, such as pay raises or bonuses or nonfinancial, including promotions, favorable work assignments, more responsibility, new equipment, praise, and recognition. A manager can use reward power to influence and control employees’ behavior, as long as employees value the rewards. For example, if managers offer employees what they think are rewards (a promotion with more responsibility), but the employees do not value them (i.e., they are insecure or have family obligations that are more important to them than a promotion), then managers really do not have reward power. Reward power can lead to better performance, as long as the employee sees a clear link between performance and rewards. To use reward power effectively, therefore, the manager should be explicit about the behavior being rewarded and should make clear the connection between the behavior and the reward. Employees also have reward power over their managers through the use of 360-degree feedback systems. Employee feedback affects managers’ promotions and other rewards, so managers tend to behave differently toward employees after 360-degree feedback is introduced into the organization.

Coercive Power:

Coercive power is a person’s ability to influence others’ behavior by punishing them or by creating a perceived threat to do so. For example, employees may comply with a manager’s directive because of fear or threat of punishment. Typical organizational punishments include reprimands, undesirable work assignments, withholding key information, demotion, suspension, or dismissal. Coercive power has negative side effects and should be used with caution, because it tends to result in negative feelings toward those who use it.

The availability of coercive power varies from one organization and manager to another. Most organizations now have clearly defined policies on employee treatment.

Clearly defined rules and procedures that govern how coercive power is used prevent superiors from using their legitimate power (formal authority) arbitrarily and unethically.

The presence of unions also can weaken coercive power considerably. One need not be in a position of authority, however, to possess coercive power. Employees also have coercive power, including the use of sarcasm and fear of rejection, to ensure that team members conform to group norms. Many organizations rely on the coercive power of team members to control employee behavior.

Expert Power:

Expert power is a person’s ability to influence others’ behavior because of recognized knowledge, skills, or abilities. Physicians are acknowledged to have expertise, special skills, or knowledge and hence expert power. Most people follow their doctor’s advice. Computer specialists, tax accountants, and economists have power because of their expertise. Experts have power even when they rank low in the organization’s hierarchy. As organizations become increasingly more technologically complex and specialized, expert power of organization members at all levels in the hierarchy becomes more important. Some firms deliberately include lower-level staff members with expert power in top-level decision making. Knowledge is power in today’s high-tech workplaces.

Expert power is based on the extent to which followers attribute knowledge and expertise to the power holder. Experts are perceived to have expertise in well-defined functional areas but not outside them. To be granted expert power, followers must perceive the power holder to be credible, trustworthy, and relevant.

Credibility is acquired by having the appropriate credentials. For example, physicians, computer specialists, and tax accountants, who have shown tangible evidence of their expertise, will be listened to closely and thereby granted expert power. These specialists may not be granted expert power in other functional areas. The person seeking expert power also must be trustworthy, that is, have a reputation for being honest. In addition to credibility and trustworthiness, a person must have relevance. For example, if physicians gave advice on political issues, it would not be relevant, and therefore the physician would not have expert power in this area.

Referent Power:

Referent power is a person’s ability to influence others’ behavior because they like, admire, and respect the individual. For example, suppose you are friends with your boss. One day, she asks you to take on a special project that you do not like. To anyone else, you would likely decline the request, but because of your special relationship with this individual, you may do it as a favor. In this instance, your boss has power over you because of your positive relationship.

Referent power develops out of admiration of another and a desire to be like that person. This helps to explain why celebrities are paid millions of dollars in endorsements. Marketing research shows that people such as Michael Jordan and Serena Williams have the power to influence your choice of athletic shoes and tennis products (Craig & Douglas, 2006). The same could be said of leaders in business firms who have a good reputation, attractive personal characteristics, or a certain level of charisma. A charismatic leader can ignite an entire organization.

Five Points of Leadership Power