Redefining Transformational Leadership
Transformational Leadership is the ability to develop a vision and inspire others to achieve it. In many corporate cultures across the globe, this definition of leadership is often accepted as the gospel truth.
Leaders are expected to have all the answers. They must develop a strategic vision and work to inspire employees to believe the gospel, so that needs are identified, work gets done and employees feel empowered. However, far too often this method of leadership falls flat. Employee engagement and adherence to executing the vision of leaders is surprisingly low, which is a concerning trend for corporations everywhere. Yet we continue to embrace an outdated style of leadership and employee engagement.
The world is changing quickly.
Most companies following a traditional methodology for leadership, find that adherence levels of employee engagement fall between 30–35% (35% if you’re lucky), while the remainder of employees are left highly un-engaged. A recent study by the Dale Carnegie Training center states, “Some startling employee engagement statistics revealed that 29% of the workforce is engaged, 45% are not engaged, and 26% are actively disengaged.” This is likely because of the effect of developing a culture and leadership model where consumption is the main driver of participation, i.e. a vision is set/pre-determined and employees are expected to consume and enact that vision. While incentives, such as the potential for promotion are available tools to motivate individuals, these tools do not drive the basic human need of motivating employees to participate and remain highly engaged. This video shows how various organizations are structured and begs the question:
“How might we re-frame the role of a leader to create an environment that empowers and enables employees to participate at higher rates?”
Companies with engaged employees outperform those who do not by 202% (Dale Carnegie Training). That is an outstanding amount that leads to real results to the bottom line. A recent article, “Understanding New Power”, published in the 2014 November edition of Harvard Business Review, discusses the new versus old power principles of leadership and how new power is challenging traditional leadership models. The article states, “Old power models tend to require little more than consumption. But new power taps into people’s growing capacity — and desire — to participate in ways that go beyond consumption.” The article by Jeremy Heimans, 2014, can be viewed here.
The Participation Scale in the graphic below, is a set of behaviors that drives the participation of individuals to higher levels. These levels include: Sharing, Shaping, Funding, Producing, and Co-Owning. I have often heard managers say that they would like to see their people take more ownership over their work, but how can a leader achieve this goal? If we want to truly engage our employees, we must be willing to go above and beyond the basic behaviors that are derived from a model of consumption and “transformational leadership.”
Participation requires companies to be customer centric, as well as employee centric. Most companies think they are but rarely deliver. Employee centric organizations allow and enable their people to directly contribute to the problem solving process. They are guided by the “Shaping”, “Producing”, and “Co-Owning” behavioral categories seen above.
“It is a far cry from simply receiving employee feedback through broad or targeted surveys that are closed, inaccessible, and leader driven. On the contrary these organizations are open, participatory, and peer-driven — they download and distribute power. Their goal is not to hoard power, but effectively to channel and share it” (Jeremy Heimans, 2014).
This distributive approach is a complete 180 degree shift to the model followed by many organizations as noted above. Leaders are solely responsible for coming up with big ideas, mobilizing people, or hiring consultants to deliver plans that competent employees and teams could come up with, given the right structure and incentives sprinkled in. Leaders do not have the answers to every question or problem, nor should they be expected to. Instead they must rely on the collective talents of their people to solve their most pressing problems. This requires a different mindset and approach to leadership within the traditional organizational pyramid, with management sitting at the top, enabling functions and employees in the middle, then customers at the bottom (Linda A. Hill, 2014).
As depicted in the exhibit below “Inverting the Organizational Pyramid” is essential to delivering a customer centric organization, one where employees come first, and customers second. This is because we cannot expect to delight our customers until we are able to delight ourselves. Providing new tools to help people get their jobs done more effectively isn’t enough. We need to find ways to develop the behavioral categories that drive participation to higher levels. If we could flip the organizational pyramid (see below), customers would be at the top, however, employees are the largest base between the company and the customer — this is termed the value zone.
“This is the place at the outside edge of the company where the most value can be derived, not inside with product developers or senior leaders, but on the lines and in the trenches with employees who deeply understand customer needs” (Linda A. Hill, 2014).
“To succeed, businesses must engage the frontline. To engage staff, businesses must establish clarity about the purpose of the service function and the agent’s role in driving value. Once a business successfully communicates that value to its staff, it has every reason to expect their staff to operate in accordance with that value. Its staff clearly know their business’ objectives when dealing with customers and they know how best to respond to customer enquiries. To make it happen, the enterprise must empower them to do so.
Not simply a customer-facing philosophy, empowerment also concerns an employee’s role within the organization. Often forced to adhere to a hierarchy, front line staff often feel powerless to respond to customer concerns, call meetings, summon support from colleagues and managers and introduce ideas about new strategies and practices. The result is a weaker, less collaborative, less productive environment” (Advisory, 2014).
Research has shown that employees who are empowered to participate not only in the decision making process, but who share a sense of ownership and purpose for what they do, provide better customer service, keen on understanding their customers goals and needs, and are more innovative in providing solutions that can maximize the value zone. In essence, this is the result of companies servicing their employees first which makes their employees feel empowered to delight their customers. It happens organically, and the adherence levels for employee engagement sky rocket.
The result of inverting the pyramid transforms employees who are complacent into “micro-leaders” of the organization. They are pro-active problem solvers who view their jobs as more than just their day to day tasks. They get excited about strategy and how to add value.
A great example of using this leadership model was displayed at the LOFT’s first Hackathon. The focus was placed on the employee who interfaced with the customer to provide innovative solutions to problems the organization faced internally. Leadership , in this case, did not create a vision or ask employees to execute on its behalf. Rather, leadership acted as the “Social Architect.” This creates an environment to solve problems and iterate through the discovery process. The process made it possible to get the best solutions and execute them quickly and openly.
“Leaders must avoid the urge to answer every question or provide a solution to every problem. Instead you must start asking the questions, seeing others as a source of [innovation], and transferring ownership of the organizations growth. The greatest impact is that it unleashes the power of the many and loosens the stranglehold of the few, thus increasing the speed and quality of innovation and decision making, every day” (Linda A. Hill, 2014).
What changes do you think are required to make this possible at your company? I look forward to your thoughts.
