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March 2022
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What is the fundamental shift in focus required from management in order to achieve better results?
There is a difference between Engagement, Enablement and Empowerment!
A lot of employers are becoming increasingly frustrated that despite having comprehensive engagement plans, their employee survey results are firmly stuck in the mediocre position.
Leaders are increasingly navigating complex social environments with individuals’ strongly-held beliefs getting in the way of meaningful debate and collaboration in the workplace.
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Question of the Month
By Wendy Lambourne, Director, Legitimate Leadership.
Question: What is the fundamental shift in focus required from management in order to achieve better results?
Answer: That excellent results can only be produced by excellent people – be they mountaineers, athletes or employees – is common sense. So too is the notion that the best route to sustainable organisational excellence is the relentless pursuit of human excellence in all those in the organisation.
But following through on this understanding is not easy. This is because it requires people to do something which feels absolutely counter-intuitive. For those in the business’s front line it requires a shift in the focus of their attention from what they want to “get” (the desired result) to what they should “give” to effect excellence in the task in front of them.
It requires them to take yet a further step back from the results. That is, to take their eyes off the results and put their attention on their people. It requires them to focus on giving their people what they need (Means, Ability and Accountability) to excel at the task and ultimately to realise the very best in themselves.
Another young leader in India used the analogy of a guided missile: your people could be highly motivated, full of potential and eager to show what they can do – but if you point them at the wrong contribution, or worse still don’t point them at anything, then this could result in chaos and devastation. Read full answer by clicking here.
Article: Are Your Employee Survey Results Plateauing Despite You Going Overboard On Engagement?
By Tony Flannigan, Associate, Legitimate Leadership.
There is a difference between Engagement, Enablement and Empowerment!
A lot of employers are becoming increasingly frustrated that despite having comprehensive engagement plans, their employee survey results are firmly stuck in the mediocre position.
The three ‘E’ words are bandied about frequently in today’s business environment – but are we using them interchangeably and confusing the intent behind each one?
In the Legitimate Leadership Model each of these words has a specific meaning.
The first thing to recognise is that they are all good and are to be encouraged!
Arguably they form a hierarchy towards building very capable people who are willingly to go the extra mile and be held accountable for their contributions.
Engagement is the basis of good communication.
Article: Five Lessons From Julia Galef’s Book, The Scout Mindset
By Jon Hersey, managing editor of The Objective Standard. Julia Galef is co-founder of the Center for Applied Rationality, based in California. This article was published in Quillette.
COMMENT BY ANGELA DONNELLY, LEGITIMATE LEADERSHIP CANADA, ON THIS ARTICLE: Leaders are increasingly navigating complex social environments with individuals’ strongly-held beliefs getting in the way of meaningful debate and collaboration in the workplace. Galef’s book highlights our tendency to employ “motivated reasoning” to defend pre-existing beliefs and conclusions. She calls this a Soldier mindset – the tendency to defend one’s ideas at all costs, and thus limit receptiveness to receiving new information. Legitimate Leadership articulates Intent as our deeper motivation, the ‘why’ behind what we do. This Intent can either be to GET, or to GIVE. When we are there to GET, we are motivated by our needs and desire to control the outcome. We are thus constrained by presumption and act expediently. Galef’s Soldier mindset! However, when our intent is to GIVE, we rise above the constraints of internalised beliefs and conclusions – and become receptive to alternative perspectives. Galef refers to this as adopting a Scout mindset. I see motivated reasoning and conditional intent (giving to get something later or desiring a specific outcome) as two sides of the same coin.
THE ARTICLE: Respect for reason has waxed and waned throughout history. Today, its tide is receding. University professors resign in frustration from what were once our bastions of rationality. Increasingly, the barbarians are not merely at the gates, but running the show in a vast swathe of humanities departments. After decades of decay in our academic training grounds, radical identitarianism and other irrationalities are spreading with accelerating speed, and we are woefully short of thinkers capable of fighting them.
