When an organization is formed, there is an Owner who forms the team, trains them and in the process, develops the Leader who can later guide and lead the team on his behalf. In order to run the organization in a systematic and desired manner, the overall working system, policies and the code of conduct are also formed. All these processes support the team to grow the business as envisioned by the owner. So, to ensure that the organization is working seamlessly, the development of leader becomes very important. It can help keep other employees oriented and committed to achieving the organization’s growth.
The leaders take the charge once the owner equips them with authority and a code of conduct.
Leader – Roles, responsibilities, outcomes
Once the leaders take the charge, they work towards expanding the team. They fulfill the requirements of business operations by developing function based numerous teams below them. Simultaneously, they form a hierarchical structure by assigning second and third line of authority stretching the chain of leadership downwards.
This looks simple, but may lead to successful implementation only, if two important things are taken care of.
1.Team building with a focus on high productivity
2.Identification of any Disruption & immediate corrective action for the same
Team building with a focus on high productivity
This is an ideal scenario, where team is built up with a complete focus on high productivity. Every team member should be motivated enough and all his/ her worries related to work should be well taken care of. It sounds difficult, but is possible with following team building considerations that can make employees’ contribution most effective and the best for the growth of any organization:
Appreciate Qualities: Every employee has some worth. That is why he is selected for working in an organization!Any person is certainly not perfect, which implies one has many positive qualities to perform a job. So, the best role of a leader will be to focus on positives and let go the negatives, if not improved through training or guidance. Always remember to motivate employees to give their best.
Right Training: Favorable qualities of employees fostering right culture and assisting high productivity should be promoted in any case. Also, enough efforts should be made to ensure that employees are not turned to any unfavorable direction, be it is inspired by leadership or else. Right training may certainly help in developing such desirable virtue-set in an employee.
Recognition and Rewarding of Leaders who are fitting face of Organizations’ values: If the star performers during initial years of joining the organization show decline in consistency over the period, several factors may be the reason. However, the biggest issue that needs immediate addressing is the organization’s recognition policy. It is the weak performance rewarding system that makes the employee indifferent to performance criteria. When any employee’s efforts go unrecognized and considered only as a part of the job, it may put the morale down. Losing faith and hope due to not getting anything in return leads employees (at any level) to start mulling over about leaving the organization in the worst case. Thus, deserving incentives for the aligned leaders and the employees should be planned in all the cases of good performance; it can be monetary or recognition or promotion. Truly speaking, anything that brings a smile on the faces of employees works miraculously.
Recognition drives people to enhance their skill set. By developing natural qualities and strengths, an employee is automatically driven to develop other necessary qualities. Recognition certainly helps creating positive and happy atmosphere. A positive atmosphere is the one, which yields better results at the end of the day. Achievement of goal is never the outcome of efforts of leader alone; it is the effort of entire team. Thus, recognition and rewarding should travel down the hierarchy and should not be restricted to certain people only. Especially those who are working tirelessly within defined organization policies’ framework and contributing to achievement of the business’s long term should always be recognized and rewarded appropriately.
Scale of Reward: When it comes to recognition and rewarding the deserving, the difference (little or big) in rewarding matters the most significantly. Just imagine, if somebody gets the same medal/ reward in both of his A+ and A++ performance, what will be the motivation factor for him to walk an extra mile?
For certain, he will not be motivated to put an extra effort in achieving A++ or vice versa.
Similarly, when there is an absence of reward entirely, irrespective of the quality performance, the employee will be apprehensive about taking more responsibilities and meeting expectations of the management in terms of work output at any point in time.
Employees rewards in different working environments
The work objectives of office staff and that of consultants is very different. While a consultant’s work is easier to estimate as these can be identified in numbers, office staff’s performance evaluation is a bit difficult. The system of rewarding an office staff, accordingly, differs too. That is why, promotions and salary raises are equally important for retention of office staff. Since designations refers direct impact of rewarding the performance, the office staff tends to become sentimental about it. Therefore, organizations need to have a sound and reasonable promotions system to keep the office employees motivated.
Reward Cycle
If the appraisals in organization are done in shorter intervals (6 months or 1 year) and the organization performance is also done annually, the organization achieves growth faster. Accordingly, the employee growth also takes a positive leap. Such short intervals help keep the employees on toes and they do not mind putting extra effort knowing that the outcome is nearby too.
And if this performance evaluation is chosen to be 3-4 years, employee will tend to work extra only when the appraisal time is nearby. There will be lots of phases in this period when frustration will creep in the employees’ mindsets. Accordingly, the organization will witness a high attrition rate. Thus, the faster acknowledgement and subsequent rewarding of the deserving employees’ performance undoubtedly contributes to the faster growth of the organization.
Respect of Good work or Performance: It is worth noting here that recognition means respect of intellect and implementation capacity of an employee. As intellectualism demands a due respect in all circ*mstances. No matter if it is at junior level or senior level, it should be handled sensitively. If the promotion or monetary compensation is not possible because of any reason, respect of good work does play a role.
Thus, to keep the employee motivation alive, any performance of any kind should at least be acknowledged first. If not rewarded monetarily, then it should be rewarded differentially with motivational adjectives like good, better and best or at least be paying with due respect.
Righteousness: It is one of the most important things in any office work culture, which should be protected in all respects. One should not let go of it or surrender before anybody or in any situation. Remember righteousness does not fit in fearful mind. Also, the fear is the main driver that leads to higher chances of mistake. A friendly or respectful atmosphere may help to replace fear with righteous thinking.
Mutual Trust: Employee trust is the most important thing for an organization. If lost, it brings bad name for organizations and leads to opportunistic culture / individualistic approach, which is again an enemy to righteousness. It is to be noted that sincerity and honesty, and thus, dedication of any employee towards any organization is there till the time mutual trust is there.
Help to meet leader’s aspirations: If employers guide their employees to achieve their goals in line with their aspirations or passion, employees also contribute their best to achieve organization’s growth targets. Thus, identification of employee or leaders’ qualities and aspirations or passion becomes important. Sometimes this may also require redefining the job role to suit employee’s orientation or strength with focus on developing him as `Jack of all’ or `Master of one’ as per his characteristics and performance.
These aspirations need not to be bigger, these can be task or project oriented. However, these certainly lead to perfect execution of job when aligned with employees’ personal objectives too. Thus, sometimes changing the employees’ position or sets of responsibilities or allocation of new roles according to employee strength becomes more beneficial to organization. It offers more dynamic approach of evaluation as compared to simply assessing him on the allocated job or on expected work output only.
Cultural Appropriation: When organizations hire for senior roles, they are not only looking for a person having strong leadership quality (soft skills) along with technical skills, but also looking for the right leadership; someone who can adopt the organization’s philosophy & culture.
It becomes very difficult, if the philosophy of his previous organization is very different from the new organization he has just joined. Thus, success of hiring for any senior positions’ roles in any organization also depends on the work culture of the previous organization. If these are somewhat similar, the ease of adjustment can ensure his longer association. Especially, when such senior roles demand coordinating with people from different professional backgrounds, the happy work culture experience of the past can help the senior leader keep positive vibe in current organization too.
Identification of Disruption & immediate corrective action for the same
Leaders are responsible for disseminating the culture and values of the organization to lower tiers of hierarchy, and ensure that all operations are being carried out based on the code of conduct and policies.
But what if this chain is disrupted and intermediate leadership doesn’t transfer these values and the culture down below? Well, in this scenario, nothing will be impacted actually if the system is robust and its policies/ work culture implementation is strong. However, in case of poor implementation, the work atmosphere can become undisciplined.
The more serious consequences become evident when the intermediate/ individual leaders start operating at their convenience. The alignment with the business’s vision becomes apparently absent and leads the organization to a course entirely deviated from what was envisioned originally.
Disruption is responsible for dissatisfaction amongst a team. It mostly happens due to individual leadership style. In this style, the leadership is largely governed by personal philosophy of working based on one’s set of beliefs and experiences. If this tendency remains unchecked, it can make such personality too dominant. They tend to dominate and affect the thinking of subordinates and make them mentally paralyzed in most of the cases. Such dominant leaders create the team of followers and not the contributors.
If they demand too much or have high expectations from the subordinates, which is not a part of organizations’ standards, it can affect employees’ orientation badly, and they will work with confused mindset.Such leaders having strong dominating attitude can leave the big void behind when they choose to move out of organization, as they do not leavebehind any person capable of taking the leadership role. This reflects in poor state of work affair long after they leave the company. Hence, it requires an early identification and immediate correction.
How to determine the disruptive element in hierarchical pattern
It is observed that such dominant leadership is sometimes associated with higher IQ, experience or wisdom, management knowledge or domain knowledge. However, sometimes it is also associated with inability to handle the people or with superiority syndrome. These ‘smart’ leaders, when fail to respect or accept the genuine views and recognize the efforts or ways of subordinates, sometimes fare badly on critical fronts due to their self-biased thinking and self-obsessed behavior. This is also one of the factor contributing to attrition rate.
Training, counselling and 360 degree appraisal – a recipe for damage control caused by disruption
Superiority syndrome can be mitigated to an extent through creating equal development opportunities for all the employees. Provide them a regular training on interpersonal skills and organization behavior.
Painfully dominant senior leaders’ actions are often led by ego, while focusing more on who is right as compare to what is right. So, the need is to ensure that decisions that impact one and all involved should be taken only after deep introspection.
Giving full control to one single person can be frustrating to others and damaging to organization. Team work takes a backseat in this case. So, change of leadership roles based on all employees’ feedback is a wise approach to ensure that all employees work collectively towards the organization’s growth. Thus, 360-degree appraisal, where the subordinate’s opinion matters too, can create the required discipline in the working of all people working at any level.
In general, an office’s working is a human system and is required to be handled after taking human values into account irrespective of the job being mechanical or service based. Quality technical system attracts quality technical people with better IQ. And, quality value system attracts quality value people with better EQ and both are important for the all-round growth of any organization.
Also, though challenging, but why can’t a system be made to tackle most of the aspirations of people, be it knowledge, position, experience, authority, responsibility, better compensation etc. with least chances of individual’s disruption, but maximum chances of contribution?
To sum up,
A successful organization can become a reality when the right people are chosen for the right job. However, right selection is not the only and complete solution; it is just the start. Correct appraisal policies, ability to reinvent the performance evaluation models, and justified performance determiners, and most importantly, adequate growth providers (like training and skill-building workshops) are some of the factors that can encourage employees to work towards the organization’s growth. Having right kind of leadership and their performance, and interpersonal relationship and cohesive work environment are important too. But How?
