In creating HR Club Sydney, I’ve been very fortunate to be able to meet a number of very amazing and passionate individuals. I also regularly get invited to events that are happening in Sydney, and am free to write my thoughts on these topics. After all, I don’t make any money from HR Club Sydney, I’m not reliant on boosting traffic to my site and I don’t get paid to say certain things. It’s great because I feel that gives me the ok to say when I think something or someone has done or is doing something cool.

With that said, the week before last I was invited to the Proteus Leadership Networking Breakfast where HR Club Sydney was fortunate enough to be given a table.

I got the opportunity to sit with some of my favourite HR Club Sydney people and it was fantastic to see so many cards being swapped and potential career opportunities being discussed.

I also wanted to write about the presentation because well I thought it was fantastic, and apologies it’s a wee bit later than I would have liked but I wanted to do it justice.

I attended this seminar at a time where I was thinking very much about leadership and what it means to be one. Within HR we know the difference between leadership and management, but it’s important to remember our friends in the business don’t always see it our way. This presentation hit the nail right on the head and I’m hoping many of us can use some of these ideas to create change in our organisations.

These are some of my key take outs (and you’ll probably be nodding your head or shouting hallelujah with me lol!).

Richard started off by talking about how people normally fall into management roles, rather than being selected for their people management skills. Familiar story particularly in areas of technical skills or ability. What happens then is that people with bad managers either leave or try to wait for them to leave. We all know about how employee engagement impacts upon people and the business- so why is it still happening?

I love the Peter Drucker quote that was used, “The only definition of a leader, is someone who has followers”.

It’s so true. Being Gen Y, I have often got the attitude from Managers that I should do exactly what they say because they are the Manager/Senior Executive/Partner/Director/Been here a really long time etc. And that’s not to say that being young means you can walk around doing what you like or thinking you know everything- but it begs the question: without people actually wholeheartedly following what you are doing, how effective are you as a leader anyway?

Richard also mentioned the work of Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones who are Europe’s leading experts on organisational culture, leadership and change.

They are past winners of the prestigious McKinsey Award for the best article in the Harvard Business Review, entitled, “Why Should Anyone Be Led by You?” The huge interest the article generated led to a five-year journey exploring authentic leadership and their book is the culmination of that research.

Just because you have the title or “authority” it doesn’t mean you will have people onboard. It’s not an entitlement- it’s a privilege to be a manager or a leader but some people these days just don’t get it. Some even believe that that is the way people should be treated because “they were treated that way” or “that’s how it is in X industry”.

4 words.

Doesn’t make it right.

Source

Richard talked about how autocratic leadership may have worked in the past, but that Gen Y just simply won’t put up with it. Will they complain? Probably not. They’ll just vote with their feet.

In looking at a definition of an autocratic leader, the wikipedia machine says that:

Under the autocratic leadership style, all decision-making powers are centralized in the leader, as with dictator leaders.
They do not entertain any suggestions or initiatives from subordinates. The autocratic management has been successful as it provides strong motivation to the manager. It permits quick decision-making, as only one person decides for the whole group and keeps each decision to himself until he feels it is needed to be shared with the rest of the group.

In the great words of Dr Phil “How’s that workin for ya?”

So now that we are all nodding our heads in unison, the real challenge is to get this message across to the decision makers of the business. Would love to get some discussion happening in this, and let’s keep it on topic. It’s not Gen Y versus Baby Boomers/Gen X etc.

It’s about leadership and what’s going to be effective.

Also- Richard was a fantastic speaker so check out his presentation here
Breakfast Followrship NSW

Apologies that my notes from the Seminar has taken some time, but I promise my in-depth notes on a few of the speakers will be headed your way this week.

To get things started, here are my notes from the bestselling author and world-reknowned thought leader in leadership development, coaching and human resources, Marshall Goldsmith.

NB. He spoke for a quite a while so these will come in a couple of posts!

In 2009 Dr Goldsmith was recognised as one of the 15 most influential business speakers in the world in the Global Bi-Annual Study sponsored by the London Times and Forbes. The American Management Association named him as one of the 50 great thinkers and leaders who have influenced the field of management over the past 80 years. Dr Goldsmith teaches executive education at Dartmouth’s Tuck School and frequently speaks at leading business schools. He is a fellow of the National Academy of Human Resources and that is America’s top HR honour and his work has been recognised by almost every professional organisation in his field.

Marshall started out by introducing himself. He’s from Kentucky, went to school in Indiana, got a PHD at UCLA, was a College Professor and Dean, and for 45 years- did three things.

1. Speaking or teaching (the part of his job that he loves the most)
2. Coaching Executives- for clients like CEOs or could be CEOs of huge companies and that is really where he learns everything-having the privilege to work with these people.
3. Writing/Editing Books & Articles- His website is called www.marshallgoldsmithlibrary.com and he encouraged everyone to visit his website as he gives everything away. He joked about how people criticise him for putting up word documents in case people use and change them. He doesn’t care- he wants you to have them!

He then went on to explain that he had the privilege of spending over 50 days with Peter Drucker before he died and was on his advising Board for 10 years. According to Marshall, Peter Drucker was the world’s greatest authority on management.

“Drucker said we spend a lot of time helping leaders learn what to do, we do not spend enough time helping leaders learn what to stop. He said half the leaders I meet don’t need to learn what to do, they need to learn what to stop”.

Pretty interesting concept but you’ll all know what he is talking about when he goes into some examples.

Using “what to stop” as a coaching tool

When Marshall was interviewed by the Harvard Business Review and asked the question “What is the number one problem with successful people that you work with?”, his answer was simply: “winning too much”.

What does this mean? Marshal says “if it is important we want to? Win. If it is meaningful, we want to? Win. If it is critical, we want to? Win. Trivial, we want to? Win. And not worth it, we want to? Win anyway.
Winners like to win!! It is very difficult for smart, successful people who constantly go through life winning, not to win”.

He then gave us a case study in which he said that 75% of his successful clients fail.

Here’s the scenario:
You want to go to dinner at restaurant X. Your partner or significant other wants to go to restaurant Y. You have a heated argument. You go to restaurant Y. It’s not your choice. The food tastes awful. The service is terrible.

Option A: Critique the food. Point out your partner was wrong. This mistake could have been avoided if they had have listened to you.
Option B: Shut Up! Eat the stupid food! Try to enjoy it and have a pleasant evening.

What would you do? Most of us say truthfully that we would critique the food. What should we do? Shut up. Is critiquing the food smart of stupid? Incredibly stupid.

Marshall then goes on to give an example which he says is so hideously stupid, it will make the previous example pail in comparison, and he predicts that half the people in the room have done this.

Scenario Two:
You have a hard day at work. Bosses are so mean: push, push, push. Your muscles are sore. You go home and your partner is there. Your partner says, “I had such a hard day today. Such a terrible day”. To which you reply “Do you have any idea what I had to put up with today etc. You think you had a hard day etc…”.

Marshall says we are so competitive, we even have to prove we are more miserable than the next person.

Lesson Learned: Help leaders (and high achievers) to stop having to win. You’ve probably heard this one before in the phrase ‘pick your battles’ etc. However, most of us don’t practice this very well in our professional or personal lives. As you may remember, I am a huge Dr Phil fan also and he would similarly call this ‘right fighting’ or describe it as ‘fighting to win’. Bottom line is, we need to help leaders to stop doing it.

Some time ago last year, I blogged about attending the Human Synergistics 11th Australian Conference on Culture and Leadership.

Being fond of the Human Synergistics tools, I love these conferences. They are a half day, they are free and you get to hear real people talk about their personal stories using the tools. Amazing success stories.

One of the main stories I spoke about was that of Mike Shove (former Managing Director and CEO of CSC Australia). You might recall from the post that I said I thought it was possibly the worst circumplex I had ever seen.

Mike was a highly engaging speaker and it’s excellent to be able to share these presentations via Human Synergistics Video Room.

Mike Shove- an honest, funny and descriptive account of the LSI Journey from a CEO's perspective

This is one you really need to watch!