The Visionary Motivator

Of the five change leadership roles the Visionary Motivator is perhaps the one which many people intuitively see as a classical leadership role.

The person who sets out the vision for the group, the organisation or the community, and is able to articulate the end destination in a compelling and convincing way.

Not only do they have the vision they can engage people in conversations around the vision and achieve buy in as a result.

In some ways the Visionary Motivator is a salesperson – able to connect with your desires and needs and address any objections in a positive and reframing way. They see the world in an optimistic way – any problems are opportunities, and setbacks, mere hurdles to overcome. If the Thoughtful Architect can design the grand strategy and win your head over, the Visionary Motivator will surely win your heart.

Watch this short video to get a sense of how the Visionary Motivator goes about their business.

But as with all of the five roles there is a shadow side. For the Visionary Motivator it is the possibility of everything descending into spin, or an inability to understand some of the pain that people might be going through on the change journey.

The Visionary Motivator

How am I standing? – On the front foot, standing tall, chest out, head high, looking at people

What am I thinking? – Envisaging the vision, connecting with the vision, asking oneself ‘how can I bring people on board?’

What am I feeling? – Positive, inspired, confident, motivated, solution-focused

What am I saying? – Let’s work together towards a brighter future

What’s my goal? – Getting motivated people moving towards the vision

For more information contact me, read our book, or take the online five roles leadership questionnaire and receive your own profile and development report.

 

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The Tenacious Implementer

Have you ever been on a training programme and ‘discovered’ that managers are not leaders and leaders are not managers?

Respected authors like John Kotter and Warren Bennis both make the distinction between managers “who make happen what would happen anyway” and leaders “who make happen what wouldn’t happen anyway”.

Our research into effective leaders of change recognised that this was a false distinction. Indeed one of the key characteristics of good leaders is to maintain focused attention on the key activities and step into the role of what we call the Tenacious Implementer.

So often in organisations we have leaders who are bright and inventive (not in all organisations mind you!) and seem to embrace change. They embrace change so much that they have barely started one initiative before starting another, and then yet another.

This doesn’t just lead to change fatigue within and throughout the organisation but it also allows the focus to be dissipated. Indeed canny operatives will be watching what the leaders are focusing their attention on, and as soon as their senior managers drop one initiative in favour of another, they too will spend less time and energy on the original.

The leader or manager who is a tenacious implementer will always return to the initiatives they have started. They hold people to account, recognise that the project needs to be seen through to the end and take quite a project management stance.

It might not be the sexy end of leadership, perhaps little vision or inspiration. But it is the part of a leaders role to manage things through to completion.

Do you want to step into the role of the Tenacious Implementer?

Then watch this video for some quick tips.

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The Edgy Catalyser

One of my favourite Simpsons episodes is when Homer is trying to go through the pearly gates and in order to proceed he is asked what his contribution has been during his life. Turns out that he discovered a new meal between breakfast and brunch!

Well a few years ago Esther Cameron & I discovered five leadership roles which are essential in managing change (Making Sense of Leadership)!

The first one is the edgy catalyser. This is the role which spots what’s wrong with the current situation – be it in the organisation or its operating environment. It is the edgy catalyser that creates discomfort and disquiet. Creates that sense of urgency that something needs to change, and soon.

Our research showed that this role is one which doesn’t gain you any friends and not too many of us like to work for such a person. However as a catalyst and a mover and a shaker (hence the name) this role is indispensable in getting things going and also ensuring that the change effort remains focused on transforming what is wrong.

Here’s a short video telling you a little more about the edgy catalyser.

The Edgy Catalyser

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Top Tips for Managing Change #3

You either know why change fails or you don’t

Meaning you are one of the many people who have been on the butt end of change and know only too well why it fails … or … you are one of those managers who implement change and believe mistakenly that the change has succeeded or prefer to blame the ‘resistors to change’ or sometimes blame the senior mangers who have moved on to other things.

Maybe I have organised the universe to only show me organisations and leaders who manage change poorly or maybe I’m not looking in the right direction.

[Actually that’s not strictly true as I have experienced and researched good change management practices and have written them up as case studies in Change Management Masterclass]

I believe disengagement, disconnection and disenfranchisement sum up, what to me is the key disabler of change. Key stakeholder groups that are not communicated with, not consulted and not involved in the change process cannot to be expected to be overjoyed with the change or with making it happen.

There are all sorts of reasons why managers don’t involve stakeholders – especially staff – but they are missing a trick or two. Indeed in my experience senior leaders and managers do not have a monopoly on the truth. They may (may) have a better vantage point to see what the organisation needs to do to deal with the future challenges; and they may have access to key metrics which tell them the current health of the organisation.

But if they don’t tap into the thoughts and feelings of the workers then they will not win their hearts and minds over.

And a very simple path to follow is to use understand why change may fail according to Kotter’s reserach:

1. Not enough sense of urgency or pressure for change
2. Failing to create a sufficiently powerful support base
3. Not developing a clear vision
4. Under-communicating the vision
5. Permitting obstacles to block the new vision
6. Failing to create short-term wins
7. Not aligning structures, systems, policies and skills
8. Neglecting to anchor changes firmly in the corporate culture

Although somewhat dated (1995) Kotter’s analysis still holds up and many change managers still use it as an overarching framework.

For now, let’s just look at the first four reasons. Kotter turned them on their heads and said what you need is to Establish a sense of urgency; Form a powerful guiding coalition; Create a vision; and Communicate that vision.

For each of these imperatives those responsible for the change should be able to use them to actively engage different stakeholder groups.

Establishing a sense of urgency could involve front-line staff examining and reporting back on market and competitive realities; managers can be identifying and discussing with their co-workers crises, potential crises or major opportunities; team and departmental meetings can be ensuring that the level of current dissatisfaction or future threat is sufficient to kick-start the change and maintain momentum.

Forming a powerful guiding coalition is about assembling a group with enough power to lead the change effort and encouraging them to work together as a team but it also means ensuring that key stakeholders are engaged and the change team has the necessary sponsorship, power and authority and connection back into the business.

Creating a vision of the future is important for people who are being expected to let go of the past. It includes creating a vision to help direct the change effort and developing strategies for achieving that vision. But it is also having a clear understanding of what you want to achieve from the change and also the route map for getting there.

Communicating the vision requires the use of every vehicle possible to communicate it and  related strategies together with clarity around any new behaviours expected and also ensuring people are informed and hopefully engaged with the change by having a shared understanding of and commitment to the direction of the change.

To be sustainably successful each of these tasks really does require engagement, connection and enfranchisement. I personally believe everyone who has a stake in the continued success of the organisation should be involved in helping create it.

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Top Tips for Managing Change #2

Identifying the key external and internal drivers for change

Last month we looked at the Seven Pitfalls in identifying the drivers for change. Clearly, if you don’t get the drivers right then the changes you develop are probably going to be way off the mark.

We looked at the difference between the Marketing-led company and the Sales-driven company. Both have their benefits and both their downsides especially in where their blindspots might be.

So the ideal process will be for management to actually listen to their front line staff and really understand what the issues are at the coal face – both from the customer perspective but also from the staff perspective.

In my experience you get rich data coming back about both customers’ wants, needs, fears etcetera and also what’s getting in the way of customer-facing staff delivering excellent products and services.
This information tends to be shorter –term and more operational and tactical.

The marketing folk and other strategists hopefully can be looking at the bigger picture, longer term issues, scanning the horizon to better understand the political, economic, societal, technological, regulatory and environmental factors which need to be mitigated or capitalised on.

With this information, combined with the valuable front-line information you have a pretty good picture of the current and possible future situations.

The one remaining question to be asking is “are we fit for purpose?” and that is are we fit for the purpose of meeting and mastering the external conditions? Once again the pitfall in many organisations is that not all managers are asking that question at every level within the organisation and not everyone is being asked that question.

Every single person in the organisation will have a perspective on what is really great in the company and also what needs to change. Both perspectives are critical and all views need to be factored into the equation.

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