A formula for creating leaders
Revisiting John P. Kotter's "What Leaders Really Do"
In Kotter's article (which I discussed in my prior blog post "Trainers as leaders and managers"), he says that effective leaders often have certain professional experiences in common, which suggests a formula that organizations can use to develop their staff into excellent leaders.
A three-step formula for creating leaders
1) Early in their careers, during their twenties and thirties, effective leaders typically have had the opportunity to face a significant challenge. This gives them the chance to attempt to truly lead, as well as to learn from the positives and negatives of the experience. This learning opportunity is an key ingredient in developing their leadership skills and perspectives. Thus, organizations that are serious about developing leaders provide challenging assignments to relatively young employees.
2) Effective leaders have also generally had the chance to break out of narrow career paths and broaden their knowledge and experiences. This happens through routes such as lateral career moves, early promotions to broad roles, assignments to special task forces, or serious management training courses. Again, organizations that want to develop leaders create these routes to broadening perspectives.
3) Effective leaders have strong networks of internal & external relationships. These networks are essential to successful leadership initiatives. Organizations can support this by offering opportunities to work on teams and build internal relationships, and they can support or encourage time spent on external networking opportunities.
Now is the time to develop leadership
This year, organizations do not have to search far for challenges to provide employees, whether early-career employees who would benefit from a first real leadership opportunity or more experienced employees who would benefit from a chance to broaden perspectives. Nonprofits can create opportunities to exercise leadership and build internal networks by setting up task forces on revenue-generat ion, cost cutting, quality assurance during budget cuts, and staff motivation and retention. In addition, because nonprofits need to collaborate and learn from each other in order to survive this moment in history, they can send employees to knowledge sharing events in the field, which offer networking opportunities and a subsequent chance to teach or lead the organization on what was learned.
How trainers can support the development of leaders
We nonprofit trainers can encourage our organizations to take advantage of the current opportunity to develop leaders. As trainers, we can build an organizational culture of continuing professional development and lifelong learning.
In the nonprofit field, we know that this is the time our communities need us the most. In the same way, as trainers, this is the time our organizations need our unique abilities the most.
Showing posts with label John Kotter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label John Kotter. Show all posts
Saturday, April 3, 2010
NYNP blog post 3-19-09
Trainers as both leaders and managers
As nonprofit trainers in these tumultuous times, we have the opportunity to help our organizations both manage and lead our staff. Both functions are essential.
Yesterday, I was at the March session of Community Resource Exchange's 2009 Leadership Caucus (http://www.crenyc.org/consult/consult_leadershipcaucus.php), where we spent the morning discussing the differences between leadership and management. The jumping off point for the discussion was John P. Kotter's 1990 Harvard Business Review article "What Leaders Really Do," in which he argues that management and leadership are complementary but distinct.
To sum up the article, Kotter describes managers as promoting stability, which includes putting hierarchies, processes, and policies in place. These systems organize and monitor people's efficiency and accuracy as they work on their organization's plans. Kotter describes leaders, on the other hand, as pushing for and supporting change. This includes aligning people so that everyone moves towards the same target, which is done by communicating a motivating vision of the future, and then convincing and empowering people to make that vision happen.
Applying these ideas specifically to trainers, when trainers work in service of management, we make sure that staff know how to do things like fill out paperwork correctly, follow procedures properly, and comply with regulations. When we work in service of leadership, we make sure that staff understand our organizations' missions, visions, and values, and we inspire staff to bring these to life. For training to have an impact on participants' behavior on the job, we as trainers need to do both.
This is especially true in the nonprofit world, where organizations strive for success on a double bottom line -- we measure success in both revenue and in progress toward our missions. In other words, we need to succeed with our heads as well as our hearts. A nonprofit organization could make huge amounts of money, but if that happened while making no progress toward its mission, the nonprofit's work would be deemed a failure. Conversely, a nonprofit could make wonderful progress toward its mission, but if that happened while losing huge amounts money, the nonprofit would cease to exist.
These issues of management vs. leadership and revenue vs. mission come to life for nonprofit trainers in that we need to address both our participants' skills and their motivation. We must provide staff with the tools they need to implement our organizations' program models, and we must also provide staff with the inspiration they will need to overcome challenges and strive towards the mission and vision.
Right now, with staff roles changing as nonprofits' budgets decrease and tough decisions being made that impact organizations' visions of the future, nonprofit trainers can be an overlooked resource. Many nonprofit trainers are adept at integrating the issues I described, as many of us have balanced the needs of management and leadership, skills and motivation in our workshops for years. This means that right now, we can be of great service to our organizations.
So the question for us becomes: how can each of us, in our own situations in our own nonprofits, step up to help with managing and leading our organizations through the crisis we face today?
As nonprofit trainers in these tumultuous times, we have the opportunity to help our organizations both manage and lead our staff. Both functions are essential.
Yesterday, I was at the March session of Community Resource Exchange's 2009 Leadership Caucus (http://www.crenyc.org/consult/consult_leadershipcaucus.php), where we spent the morning discussing the differences between leadership and management. The jumping off point for the discussion was John P. Kotter's 1990 Harvard Business Review article "What Leaders Really Do," in which he argues that management and leadership are complementary but distinct.
To sum up the article, Kotter describes managers as promoting stability, which includes putting hierarchies, processes, and policies in place. These systems organize and monitor people's efficiency and accuracy as they work on their organization's plans. Kotter describes leaders, on the other hand, as pushing for and supporting change. This includes aligning people so that everyone moves towards the same target, which is done by communicating a motivating vision of the future, and then convincing and empowering people to make that vision happen.
Applying these ideas specifically to trainers, when trainers work in service of management, we make sure that staff know how to do things like fill out paperwork correctly, follow procedures properly, and comply with regulations. When we work in service of leadership, we make sure that staff understand our organizations' missions, visions, and values, and we inspire staff to bring these to life. For training to have an impact on participants' behavior on the job, we as trainers need to do both.
This is especially true in the nonprofit world, where organizations strive for success on a double bottom line -- we measure success in both revenue and in progress toward our missions. In other words, we need to succeed with our heads as well as our hearts. A nonprofit organization could make huge amounts of money, but if that happened while making no progress toward its mission, the nonprofit's work would be deemed a failure. Conversely, a nonprofit could make wonderful progress toward its mission, but if that happened while losing huge amounts money, the nonprofit would cease to exist.
These issues of management vs. leadership and revenue vs. mission come to life for nonprofit trainers in that we need to address both our participants' skills and their motivation. We must provide staff with the tools they need to implement our organizations' program models, and we must also provide staff with the inspiration they will need to overcome challenges and strive towards the mission and vision.
Right now, with staff roles changing as nonprofits' budgets decrease and tough decisions being made that impact organizations' visions of the future, nonprofit trainers can be an overlooked resource. Many nonprofit trainers are adept at integrating the issues I described, as many of us have balanced the needs of management and leadership, skills and motivation in our workshops for years. This means that right now, we can be of great service to our organizations.
So the question for us becomes: how can each of us, in our own situations in our own nonprofits, step up to help with managing and leading our organizations through the crisis we face today?
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