NEIL McGrechan interviewed Carolyn Taylor, author of Walking the Talk, about the role of leaders and managers in driving performance.
Neil: How would you say leaders shape behaviour in organisations?
Carolyn: Over time, leaders develop a way of looking at the world. What they value will influence how they behave, and their behaviour will set standards for how others behave.
People look to leaders as to ‘what do you expect of me?’, so over time behavioural norms are established that impact the organisation results. If you’re looking to produce a different result the thing that creates more difference than anything is when leaders start to change the way they think.
This is the leadership mindset and includes: how leaders think, what they value, what they believe is important, and how they set priorities.
So, for example, if an organisation wants to be more customer-centric, there has to be changes in the values hierarchy or beliefs about what is important or given priority.
Neil: Certainly from our experience this mental shift is often the most difficult one for leaders to make.
Carolyn: Yes, understanding the relationship between the culture and outcomes you want, and the activities and the behaviours that will help you get there, that’s the challenge.
Neil: The link between be-do-have.
Carolyn: Yes, how do I need to be to do certain things? If leaders say, “We want to become the leading provider in our market”, the next question is “Who do you have to be in order to become that?”.
Neil: And that certainly forms the link between culture and brand looking at how organisations are viewed externally and internally.
Carolyn: That’s right and it’s often missed that what the customer experience is, is actually a culture in action, and your culture will determine the way your people behave.
Neil: While we’re talking about culture, which archetype delivers the best outcome to improve organisational performance?
Carolyn: It would be great to say one is more important than the other, but it depends on the business strategy or strategic imperative and what is the most powerful archetype.
If you’ve been a very strong sales-pushed organisation, you may not have the level of customer retention you need. If that’s the case customer centric might be the next step. On the other some organisation love their customers to death but are making no money, so it depends. Understanding your current culture and what you are trying to achieve strategically is really important. Then you can focus on the archetype that will help you be the organisation you need to perform.
Neil: In terms of developing leadership mindsets, which tactics do you think have been the most effective?
Carolyn: I guess the first things for a leader is that most of us are unconscious about the mindsets we have so are often in automatic mode about our values. One of the elements is some mechanism to hold up the mirror to become more conscious. The second piece is determining the behaviours that are causing some difficulty and using either a coach, or some kind of external help.
For example we have a client that has a lot of international players coming to their market. They are struggling to keep staff and need to become the best place to work. The key challenge for the leader has been to involve, engage and empower his people.
He needs to adopt a willingness to let go of control and allow his key staff to take bigger roles. What’s sitting behind that at a mindset level is he is actually quite deeply arrogant. He would call it ‘not suffering fools gladly’. One of the roles of a coach is to be able to demonstrate the link between the performance outcomes, which in this case is losing key people, and the culture they want where people really want to stay and feel engaged and empowered.
Leaders send a strong message by the choices that they make and so being seen to take on board feedback and to start to change behaviour also sends a message to the organisation. Such a leader, although he has some issues to overcome, recognises that while previous behaviour may have contributed to the culture, steps in the right direction will also be keenly observed, and emulated, where the walk, matches the talk.
Neil McGrechan is the managing director of WA Business News Best Employer 2009, MODAL. Carolyn Taylor will be in Perth on September 28 and 29 presenting at a lunch, hosted by MODAL, and holding a master class. For details please visit www.modal.com.au.