Leaders risk not realising their full potential if they don’t develop insight into the effect their behaviour has on others. The very qualities that make some individuals outstanding leaders could end up limiting their career and eventually be their downfall. This is the message in a new report written by Pete Ashby, Director of asaleader.com following years of experience working as an executive coach to senior managers.
The report “Virtues and Vices of Exceptional Leaders” is very timely as the NHS chief executive Sir David Nicholas spoke of the need for a new management style in his addressed to the Kings Fund Summit on Leadership. This comes only days after the Institute of Leadership and Management (ILM) called for a more inclusive approach to management. In both cases the concern was that unless managers raised their game the NHS would not deliver the biggest changes in its history.
Ashby makes the point that chief executives all too often don’t encourage and don’t get direct feedback on their own performance. The report refers to senior mangers “dancing around” the their chief executive meaning that they tell them only what they want to hear, filter out the bad news and wouldn’t dream of telling the boss that their focus on the big picture means they are missing some important detail or that their determination and enthusiasm is inhibiting people from asking legitimate questions for fear of appearing disloyal or not on board.
This prompts the question how do you create a safe climate for honest feedback? Executive coaching where by the coach observes the individual in a number of typical management situations, a senior team meeting, a presentation to the board, an address to a staff conference, a meeting with a partner agency or a one to one with a colleague and provides feedback is a good place to start. But just working with the chief executive won’t stop the dancing to do this the whole senior management team will have to have the same opportunity. At which point they will recognise that this is not just an issue at their level but about how confident and safe people throughout the organisation about saying what they really think.
The chief executive and their senior management team can model a more inclusive management style but they will need to do more than this to convince the wider staff group that imposed change and autocratic leadership is a thing of the past. Changing the management culture throughout an organisation is a big task, it is not a one off exercise, it is a journey that will take years which of course is not what the board, the senior management team or those at the DH want to hear. However if you want to learn how one large, complex public sector organisation went about it there is a detailed case example in Equipping managers for an uncertain Future published by Russell House.
Blair McPherson is author of numerous articles and several books on leadership and management www.blairmcpherson.co.uk
