In every organization, let it be large or small, periods of transition occur that are difficult for everyone involved. When this occurs, it is important for every employee to be as positive as possible. This is especially important for those who manage others, which has led me to think about the role of mid-level leadership during transitions.
For my day job, I am lucky enough to work with wonderful people, who are talented, dedicated, and friendly (the last one is not always required). My job is also the definition of a mid-level leadership position (actually, it is probably low-level) and every action and conversation I have affects others. Because I have direct and indirect influence over many people, I have thought a lot about how my behaviors, as a mid-level leader, impacts others. This led me to write a series, still in-progress, about the wonderful book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, and more recently, think about my role during a period of great transition. Throughout the next few articles, I will discuss how one’s behaviors and my behaviors as a manager affects employees.
Throughout these articles, I will use the term manager versus leader most of the time because most mid-level leaders are mainly managers. Managers spend most of their time running a department and directly interact with his or her employees, while a leader, who is higher in an organization, works on strategy, influences decision makers, gets reports on how a department or departments are performing, and indirectly interacts with employees. A manager’s leadership skills are important but for a mid-level leader his or her’s management skills need to be at the forefront and leadership skills need to always be available when needed. In a good article at the Harvard Business Review, Marcus Buckingham surveyed over 80,000 managers to find out what great managers and what great leaders do to be successful. The one quality above others that great managers possess, by directly interacting with employees, is the ability to, “is to turn one person’s particular talent into performance. Managers will succeed only when they can identify and deploy the differences among people, challenging each employee to excel in his or her own way” (2005).
As far as sources for these articles, I will use information found from common web sources versus scholarly sources. The reason for using common web sources is to keep my message simple and use advice that can be considered common knowledge and taken from first hand experience. Most people in management positions will seek this type of information on how to improve their management skills rather than research based, peer reviewed articles from the halls of academia.
Thoughts on Leadership Series:
Thoughts on Leadership
Language of Inclusion & Engagement
Reference
Buckingham, M. (2005). What great managers do. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2005/03/what-great-managers-do
No comments:
Post a Comment