Wednesday, March 26, 2014

MANAGEMENT / LEADERSHIP SPECIAL......................... Who you are as a human being determines how well you perform



Who you are as a human being determines how well you perform 

A commonly-held belief is that to become a better leader, you have to improve your performance at work. While on the face of it, it does make sense, Robert (Bob) Rosen presents another point of view. “Who you are as a human being is what drives you in the workplace and that is what determines how well you perform,” says Rosen, founder, Healthy Companies International and author, Grounded: How Leaders Stay Rooted in an Uncertain World. Rosen has spent over two decades studying and advising CEOs on how to build better companies that balance results as well as the human side of the business. “Having studied leaders, I noticed two things. One, that the world was changing faster than the ability of leaders to re-invent themselves, and that the model of leadership was based on the paradigm that it is what you do as a leader that drives you as a person,” says Rosen. With the gap between the leaders we have and leaders we need increasing and the focus firmly on what these leaders did in terms of performance but not as human beings, Rosen realized the need for a different perspective on the issue. According to him, leadership is facing an existential crisis with high levels of distrust and cynicism against many leaders. The combined forces of competition, complexity, constant change and information overload all work together to box the leader in. How he responds to this crisis will define how he, and the company he runs, will perform. This is where a healthy leader comes in. Healthy leaders are disciplined, self-aware and committed to personal growth for themselves and for those around them. They are attuned to four agendas. The financial agenda helps them ensure that they have the capital and results required for continuity, success and growth. The operations agenda, which focuses on efficiency and processes. The market agenda which keeps them tuned to their customers and competition, and most important, the human agenda. Using the metaphor of a tree that stays grounded in a storm, Rosen says that there are six dimensions to a healthy leader:
Physical Health: Being strong enough to cope with the pace of growth
Emotional Health: Being self-aware and having the hope and resilience to bounce back Intellectual Health: Asking hard questions, curious, constantly assessing yourself and adapting to change and innovating
Social Health: Being authentic and building mutually nourishing relationships
Vocational Health: Having a passion for success and a meaningful calling in life
Spiritual Health: Not whether you are religious, but whether you have a higher purpose and a sense of being part of something bigger than yourself.
“These six elements have always been around. People talk about driving high performance but not leadership health. They look at factors like shareholder value and reputation as a measure of success but don’t go down to the beginning of the value chain to see what kind of leaders are creating these companies,” says Rosen. Who you are is grounded in your roots, and that in turn determines the kind of team and organization you will build. And this applies not only to CEOs but leaders at all levels. “Healthy leaders are self-aware, conscious and committed to their own development. If they aren’t, then its not possible for them to run a sustainable business or organization,” he says. Other characteristics of healthy leaders include being open to feedback and developing their own skills, at the same time working at building healthy executive teams. “Healthy leaders have a higher purpose and talk about that, awaken passions and get people on the same page. They unleash human energy,” says Rosen. According to him, Ford’s Alan Mulally is one such healthy leader. Closer home, he ranks Kumar Mangalam Birla as a healthy leader. “He’s a master at intellectual health, curious and always learning and unleashing human energy and growing business and seizing opportunities,” he says. In his work with CEOs over the last two decades, Rosen has found that most great leaders show a mix of these elements in varying proportions. He also believes that spiritual health is the most important metric, especially given the current economic and business environment. Does the leader have a higher spirit and a global connectedness mindset? Does he realise that his employees, suppliers and customers are located all over the world and that it’s important to be sensitive to cultural differences and at the same time pick up best practices from everywhere? Rosen believes this is something Indian leaders seem to do well at. It’s not easy, he cautions, and it takes practice to get better at these factors, but when you do, you are on your way to building a highperformance organization of the future.
b y Priyanka Sangani CDET140314

No comments: