Where does your leadership style fall on the continuum from highly consultative to highly directive?

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Hi, my name’s Neil Poynter, and welcome to this episode of “The Leadership Soapbox.”

What I want to talk about this time follows on from my previous video in which I talked about five points that leaders should be doing right now.

Well, it’s not just about what we should be doing. It’s about how we do it. And this is about our style and the way in which we engage with our people.

Remember from that previous video, if you haven’t seen it, I mentioned the importance of engagement and building motivation. Well, this is part of it, because how we behave with people has a huge impact on how well they will take on our decisions and plans.

So what I’m going to do in this one is just use a very, very simple behavioral model, and it’s a continuum, where at one end, I’ve got a highly consultative style and the other end, I’ve got a highly directive style.

And there are three things that are going to impact where we are on that continuum.

So first of all is time. How much time do I have available?

Now, let’s just think about a situation here. In a crisis, I don’t have a lot of time. I’m time short. That necessarily means that consultation has to be, if it happens at all, kept short and brief, I’m definitely going to be moving towards the highly directive style, especially in a genuine crisis.

So my first factor that impacts this scale is time.

The second factor that is going to impact this is the amount of knowledge and experience that my people have.

There is no point in my consulting with people who have no experience or knowledge. Equally, there is a huge advantage to me consulting with people who have got lots of knowledge and experience.

Now, this brings in really that if I have time, and knowledge and experience available, there is no doubt that my best solutions are going to come to problems by moving towards the consultative end of the scale. So this is where we want to aim for.

Now my third factor that will impact this is how willing people are to engage in a consultation with me.

If they’re not, there is no point again.

So three factors, time, knowledge and experience, and willingness. Now spin that over and remembering the point that our best solutions are going to come to problems from the highly consultative end. And what I’ve now got is three things I need to develop in my team.

I need to give them time.

I need to create knowledge and experience in my team.

And thirdly, I need to create the willingness and engagement and the desire to want to be involved with things, because there is no doubt that is where my best solutions are going to be.

Now a question for you, how good are you at delivering those three things

How good are you at giving people plenty of time, allowing them to develop knowledge and experience, and do you create that desire, and do you choose to flex your style depending upon the situation that you’re facing?

Okay, this is all important stuff that we need to be thinking about. So if this is something you’d like to talk more about, please drop me an email, or a comment, or whatever the best way is for you to contact me. But this is also something that I’m going to be leading into a deeper dive video when we start talking about emotional intelligence. So look out for that one. I hope that’s useful, and I look forward to speaking to you soon.

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5 steps to leading during the Covid crisis

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Hi, my name’s Neil Poynter and welcome to this edition of The Leadership Soapbox. What I want to talk about in this episode is what we, as leaders, need to be doing right now.

We find ourselves, and when I say we, I’m suggesting almost every organisation in the world and therefore every leader, is finding themselves in challenging circumstances. Things have changed, things have changed quite dramatically for some organisations, some more than others, and this is when we, as leaders, need to step up.

Leadership, when things are going well, is easy, it’s great fun, we can set some plans, make some decisions and people go off and execute. It’s when life gets challenging and difficult, that we as leaders, need to step up.

Have you ever had that experience of suddenly people turning around and looking at you and going, “so what do we do boss?”

Yeah, well, we’re kind of in that moment, aren’t we?

Okay, so what I’m going to do is I’m going to give you five questions that we need to be able to answer in the affirmative to make sure that we’re doing what we’re doing. And these questions work as a great way of making us think about, are we doing it as well as we can?

So here we go.

Question one, do I understand, do we fully understand the situation that we find ourselves in and what the impact of that is?

Now, by understand, I mean two things.

First of all, the insight. Do we know what has happened to us and why? And then the foresight is, what does that mean for us going forward?

Now, that’s what I mean by understanding. So it’s that ability to comprehend what has happened to us, and also know what it means going forward, that’s understanding.

Now, and if I can’t do that, it’s almost impossible for me to succeed at the next bit, which is point two; are we making the right decisions and making the right plans in order to match our situation?

I cannot even know if I’m making the right decisions if I don’t fully understand the situation, or have enough understanding of the situation, to make those decisions and to be able to decide what decisions I need to make.

So there’s a real sequence here, understanding, decision-making, and then plans come out of decisions.

What am I going to do?

What’s the situation?

What are we going to do?

Decide what we’re going to do.

Now we plan how to do it. So that’s the first two.

Point three, Am I, are we actively engaging and generating morale and motivation for our people.

People are concerned right now. They want to know that we are on it. They want to see visible leadership that is there and ready to step in and ready to be available for what is going on. And they need to trust us. So, what are we doing to generate that engagement and motivation in our plans and decisions?

So, engagement and motivation.

Point four, delivering and execution. Are we monitoring the delivering and execution to make sure it’s happening?

Are we ready to step in and take control if necessary, to make sure that we drive that delivery and execution through? Now that doesn’t mean we’re actually doing everything because obviously what we’d really like is to set all the plans in motion and get others to execute them. But well, people need to know again that we are interested and on it. It also plays into point five where we need to be able to constantly review.

So point five, we need to review, is our delivery and execution matching those plans and decisions?

So this is a circular process, we start with our understanding, which is around the outside if you like. Then we’ve got the decision and planning. We’ve then got the engagement and motivation, and then going on into delivery. But it’s circular.

We all know that no plan survives first contact with reality. Things are going to change. We’re going to need to make new decisions. Then reengage with people, then execute.

This is a circular process. We need to be checking, are we delivering against those plans?

Are we delivering against the situation we find ourselves in?

So there are five points for you.

Now I want to follow up this video with two others. One is a case study of an organisation that I think is doing this really well right now.

And the second one is, okay, this is what we should be doing. Now I need to talk, now we need to think about how we do it. How do we as people engage with our teams, and do we change our style at all?

So this is the what, we now need to think about the how. So there should be some links coming up to videos and also to the subscribe button. I hope that’s been useful. Let’s be thinking about these five questions.

And if you’d like to carry on the conversation with me, please send me an email and it would be great to hear from you. Thanks very much.

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This question transforms leadership mindset

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Hi, my name’s Neil Poynter and welcome to The Leadership Soapbox.

On this first video, I want to start with a question. And it’s a question, not that we ask of others, but it’s a question that we ask of ourselves, and it’s one that I’ve seen people use and when they do it well it really transforms their thinking and their mindset about leadership.

So, here we go, here’s the question;

What support does my team need from me today, tomorrow, next week, next month, next year, in order for them to be as successful as possible?

Let me do that again.

What support does my team need from me today, tomorrow, next week, next month, next year, in order for them to be as successful as possible?

Let’s just think about that.

Now what I want to do is break that down and I’m going to do it from the end back to the beginning.

So, let’s start with the end piece.

In order for them to be as successful as possible. Now in order for them to be as successful as possible, in order for me to give them the support they need to do that, I’ve got to know what that success looks like.

So, that prompts my thinking straight away.

So, what does that success look like? What are the numbers? What are the outcomes?

What’s that going to be?

What’s that going to look like, feel like, sound like, all of that stuff?

So, we’ve gotta have a goal, the end goal.

Where’s the end goal?

Where’s the end goals in time, performance, whatever they are?

So, we’ve got a performance statement there.

Secondly, coming about, we had the times, today, tomorrow, next week, next month, next year. This is about me thinking not just in the moment, but I’m also planning ahead. I’ve gotta be thinking, what are they going to need from me?

What do they need?

Now that brings up all sorts of topics as to what that support might be and when they need it, but it means I’ve got to plan.

Now, I have heard people have difficulty in seeing planning as work, but this question proves that we need to be planning ahead. We need to be thinking ahead as good leaders in order to set our team up for success.

Okay, let’s come back to the beginning.

What support does my team need from me?

Now, what this does is it puts us into the place where I was taught right from the beginning in my leadership career as an Army Officer at Sandhurst, serve to lead.

In order to lead people, we serve others.

Now, it’s a really good approach to have because what it then does is go, okay, so what do my team need?

What do they need?

They might need direction. They might need decisions. They might need planning.

They might need. Now, that’s another video that I’m going to do as a followup to this, but it puts me in the mindset of, what does my team need from me?

And, it puts me looking outwards to my team, rather than inwards to me. The visual of this is turning an organization chart upside down.

So, if we’re the boss, we’re the boss and it fans out above us. And if you think about it, it’s those people at the top of the organization chart when it’s flipped upside down that we want to make successful and that’s our job.

If we make them really successful at what we need them to be successful at, it’s all going work.

And that’s what this question does.

Now, in the next video what I’m going to do is I’m going to look at a model that is perhaps a basis for what that support might be, and so that we can develop this and go, okay, I’ve now thought about that, let me look at the boxes that I might have to tick and where do I need to take action?

Okay, so there’s the question.

I wonder what that does for you.

I wonder how that feels to you.

I’d be really interested to hear. So please, comment back to me, either in the comments below on YouTube or by email or on LinkedIn, however you feel. But, it’d be really good to get some feedback on this because what I have seen is that this works if it’s done right. Okay, great to speak to you again, great to be with you and I’ll look forward to hearing back from you. Thanks very much.

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Welcome to The Leadership Soapbox

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Hi. My name’s Neil Poynter and welcome to The Leadership Soapbox.

What I’d like to do in this introductory video is firstly, I’d like to give you an idea of what’s this all about?

Why is it important?

Why perhaps am I doing this now?

Secondly, I’d like to tell you a little bit more about why I’m doing, why is this important to me and perhaps a little bit about me and what I think I bring to this.

Thirdly, I’d like to give you an idea about what you’re actually going to see and hear on here and how it might, well, pan out for us and what we might be able to get up to together.

So first of all, why is this important?

If I look around the news and the media right now, there is active discussion about the subject of leadership. It’s being talked about. We find ourselves in extraordinary times at the moment, and perhaps one of the major skillsets that is going to help us get through this, is good leadership.

And I don’t think this is just at the political level. Although that’s the one that’s perhaps dominating the news at the moment.

I think this is going to have impact down into our local communities. I think it’s also absolutely critical in the organizations that we find ourselves working in, whether they be commercial or charity, because we are all facing incredible difficulties at the moment.

So this is something that is going to impact all of us, from the smallest organizations to the biggest multinationals across into the international politics, in right down into our local communities.

So this is something that is potentially very critical to what we are involved with right now in our lives.

So why is this important to me?

Why am I doing this?

I have been passionate about leadership and its impact on people and organizations for 35 years. This started off for me as being an army officer in the British Army and the Royal Engineers, and also being an instructor at Sandhurst for two years.

And it’s something I have seen in my subsequent career. Working in the software industry, and then as a consultant in leadership and management development.

I have seen the importance and the impact of good leadership skills on everyday people and the success of the organizations that they’re involved in.

And I passionately believe that good leadership is at the absolute core of having successful organizations and communities. So this is something I really believe in.

Thirdly, what are you going to see in here on here?

Well, what I want to do is do a mixture of things from bringing topical subjects that I see in the news that are perhaps worthy of discussion and debate. And I do want some debate on here.

I want to do to use comments, I want to get people perhaps talking on here. And not just me. The whole idea of the Leadership Soapbox, it’s not me on the Soapbox, it’s leadership that’s on the Soapbox.

I’m also going to bring, where examples of good practice, perhaps some models and some questions, perhaps for all of us about being able to look at ourselves and examine and go,

“Well, what can I do to raise my game? What can I do to raise my team’s game now in these times that are absolutely critical for us?”

So that’s it.

That’s what the Leadership Soapbox is all about.

The first video, which is going to be a question that I think, and I’ve seen used by good leaders. And I think it’s really a great way of getting our mindset right. And that’s the first video that’s going to be out in the next couple of days. I look forward to interacting with you, Neil@NeilPoynter.com

I really, really look forward to being in contact with people. And let’s engage on this. Thanks very much. I’ll hopefully speak with you soon.

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