Laura Wolfe Coaching LLC

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Louisiana Leadership Wisdom

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la flagHere’s a recap of some thoughts shared by panelists at the recent Louisiana Women in The Global Economy Discussion Forum sponsored by AT&T and the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry.

Three lessons of success from Sandra Woodley, University of Louisiana System President:
1. Determination – summed up by Sonia Perez, AT&T Louisiana President, who said (something like), “I haven’t always been the smartest person in the room, but I’ve always been willing to work the hardest.”
2. Confidence – you may not know everything about the job when you are selected for it, but you must be confident that you can master what you need to learn and that you will be successful.
3. Self-honesty – Woodley said you must be brutally honest about your weaknesses and willing to address them. This takes confidence. (see #2)

About mentoring and developing young women into leaders, Ann Duplessis, Sr. VP at Liberty Bank and former Louisiana State Senator, urged women to bring their daughters to work to shadow them. She said over the years she has observed men do this often with their sons, no apologies. However, women don’t do it as much for fear they’ll be perceived as babysitting. There is great value to kids in seeing that they don’t necessarily have to reinvent in the (career) wheel as their mom or dad has cut a path for them.

Maya Bennett, educator and former Teach for America Corps member, discussed STEM (science, technology, engineering, & math) education. Girls lose interest in STEM in middle school. One way parents can kindle and keep interest in STEM is to answer kid’s questions from a science standpoint when possible. A quick google search can usually answer most anything. For example, ‘why is the sky blue?’. And in case you haven’t heard this one, add Art to STEM and you get STEAM.

Bennett also shared that in Louisiana, for every one unemployed person, three STEM related jobs exist. It’s really not a job shortage but a lack of skilled workers. Sonia Perez stressed how critical this is becoming and that women comprise only about 25% of the STEM workforce. Some good news though  – Georgia Tech, in collaboration with AT&T, is now offering an online masters of computer science degree for about $6600.

Your thoughts?

Size It Up

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I’m  re-reading The First 90 Days by Michael Watkins because an updated and expanded version came out recently. It’s full of great info for managing the transition into a new role especially, but a lot of the recommendations are good ideas for leadership in general.

The book makes clear that one of the initial and most important tasks for anyone in a new role is diagnosing the situation in order to determine what the course of action needs to be. And here’s the big takeaway – different types of situations require different responses. For leaders, one size does not fit all.

This isn’t a new concept and actually makes me think of situational leadership theory and the work of Hersey and Blanchard. But The First 90 Days is really useful because of the focus on the transition into a new role.

It introduces the STARS model of common business situations leaders in new roles may find themselves in (start-up, turnaround, accelerated growth, realignment, sustaining success) and offers guidance on appropriate actions given the particular situation. And upon diagnosis, a leader may discover their responsibilities include a variety of business situations, requiring a variety of approaches. Again, one size does not fit all.

I’ll close with some wisdom from the book on personal development: “Don’t restrict your focus to hard skills. The higher you rise, the more important the key soft skills of cultural and political diagnosis, negotiation, coalition building, and conflict management will become.”

Would love to hear your thoughts on leadership transitions.

Another Oldie

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exact balanceI lately mentioned the distinction between MGT1.0 and MGT 2.0, roughly 20th century management as opposed to what’s needed now in the new world of work. I do want to make clear that management today couldn’t be without the lessons, theories and research of the past. There’s some pretty good stuff back there. I hope you’ll bear with me for one more post from the history of management thought. I promise to come back to the present next week.

Another oldie and goody, which has been in most every management textbook I’ve used, is equity theory. Sometimes it is discussed as a theory of job satisfaction but is also categorized as a theory of motivation. I think it’s another piece of the employee engagement puzzle.

At the risk of oversimplifying, the basic idea is that people are always, either consciously or unconsciously, monitoring their inputs against the outcomes of their job. Inputs are what a person brings to and puts into their job such as their knowledge, training, education, experience, loyalty, work ethic, etc. Outcomes include pay and benefits, status, recognition, job security, company car, corner office, etc.

Another component of equity theory is the idea of a comparison other. This is someone to compare a situation against and can be a coworker, friend, classmate, neighbor, relative, or some idealized other. People look at their ratio of inputs to outcomes in light of their comparison other’s situation.

If a person perceives inputs = outcomes, they feel OK.

If an employee believes that their outcomes > inputs, they probably feel pretty good about the situation and may even be motivated to work harder and be a better organizational citizen.

If the perception is that their inputs > outcomes, they will feel not right – kind of like the cognitive dissonance marketing gurus talk about. This discomfort leads people to take action to balance their equity ratio. The options are to either increase their outcomes (ask for a pay raise or bonus, steal office supplies, etc.) or decrease their input (come in late/leave early, take care of personal business on company time, stop going above and beyond, etc.). Some extreme ways workers deal with inequity are to bring in a union to represent them or to withdraw from the relationship completely (quit).

Observe the behavior of employees you know. Do you see equity theory playing out?

Would love to hear your thoughts on equity theory.

Your Legacy

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Behavioral modeling is the most elementary way that humans learn. This means that people observe what others do and then do the same thing. If you’re not sure about that, just let a bad word slip in front of a four year-old and see what happens. It is why mentoring programs are so popular and so effective.

As a manager, this puts a pretty heavy burden on what you do all the time. Because your people watch your actions and do what they see. Then they become managers and manage as they observed. Your example and influence continues. If you have ever wondered why a crappy manager is the way they are, just ask them about managers in their past.

In today’s organizations, managers are asked to do more than is humanly possible. So being harried and impatient and taking short-cuts may seem like the only way. But the view from 10,000 feet shows that what a manager does every day is part of a very powerful legacy that stretches years into the future.

Ask yourself, “Is this the way I want my (manager) descendents to do it?”.

Some lessons:

  • Everything you do as a manager matters.
  • Work for great managers and just soak it up.
  • If that’s not possible, make a conscious effort to not pick up the bad habits of bad managers.

For those with a history of working for bad managers, consider coaching.

 

What do you think?