Friday, 21 December 2007
"The Advertiser" - venial & mortal sin!
Research and young people.
From "The Age" 18/12/2007
This is interesting research about how young people spend their timehttp://www.theage.com.au/news/national/kids-hooked-up-to-but-not-on- gadgets/2007/12/17/1197740182399.html
from the article:
"research released by the government media watchdog, the Australian
Communications and Media Authority, suggests young people have not
increased the total time they spend being entertained by electronic
devices in the past decade and rank outdoor activities and hanging
out with friends well above sitting in front of a TV or computer."
Tuesday, 18 December 2007
Coaching & Leadership - an excerpt
(Some stuff I came across as part of my post-grad studies & I apologise that I've lost the reference because it was on my computer with some kind of gobbledygook 'name')
But there’s there’s no one-size-fits-all approach when dealing with people, so it’s important to see coaching in context, to understand where, when and how it can be effective for leaders - and what the alternatives are.
In their well-known book Leadership and the One Minute Manager Ken Blanchard, Patricia Zigarmi and Drea Zigarmi present coaching as one of four basic leadership styles - Directing, Coaching Supporting and Delegating. They argue that managers need to be flexible in adopting the most effective style for any given situation. In a similar spirit, Daniel Goleman wrote an article for the Harvard Business Review called Leadership that Gets Results, in which he argued that managers should utilise “a collection of distinct leadership styles - each in the right measure, at just the right time”. The analogy he used (no doubt familiar to corporate executives) was of a bag of golf clubs:
Over the course of a game, the pro picks and chooses clubs based on the demands of tbe shot. Sometimes he has to ponder his selection, but usually it is automatic. The pro senses the challenge ahead, swiftly pulls out the right tool, and elegantly puts it to work. That’s how high-impact leaders operate, too.
What makes Goleman’s article really interesting is his presentation of a research project carried out by the consulting firm Hay/McBer, into the relative effectiveness of different leadership styles. He begins by identifying six basic leadership styles:
- Coercive - demanding compliance
- Authoritative - mobilizing people towards a vision
- Affiliative - building relationships and promoting harmony
- Democratic - promoting consensus through participation
- Pacesetting - setting high standards by example and demanding the same of others
- Coaching - delegating responsibility and developing people for success
Here’s Goleman’s characterization of the coaching style of leadership:
Coaching leaders help employees identify their unique strengths and weaknesses and tie them to their personal and career aspirations. They encourage employees to establish long-term development goals and help them conceptualize a plan for attaining them. They make agreements with their employees about their role and responsibilities in enacting development plans, and they give plentiful instruction and feedback
I’m not sure I agree that good coaches habitually give “plentiful instruction” - coaching usually involves asking questions rather than giving instructions - but apart from that this is a good description of the coaching style of leadership. As Goleman points out, “Coaching leaders excel at delegating” - the key to their leadership is their ability to help people identify their personal and professional goals, and act as facilitators, letting individuals take responsibility for their own success.
Once the researchers had defined these six leadership styles, they assessed the impact of each style on ‘climate’, a term devised by psychologists to assess the ‘working atmosphere’ of an organisation. Climate is defined in terms of the following six factors:
1. Flexibility (freedom to innovate without being shackled with red tape)
2. Responsibility
3. Standards (set by people in the organisation)
4. Rewards (how accurate and fair these are)
5. Clarity (about mission and values)
6. Commitment
According to the researchers, of the six leadership styles, two of them - Coercive and Pacesetting - had a negative impact on climate. It’s no great surprise that Coercive was the least effective leadership style, except in emergencies. Few managers who really think about impact of their behaviour on others are likely to habitually coerce people into obedience. Perhaps more surprising was the fact that the Pacesetting style had a negative effect on climate. After all, isn’t setting a good example one of the things we expect of a leader?
In fact, the pacesetting style destroys climate. Many employees feel overwhelmed by the pacesetter’s demands for excellence, and their morale drops. Guidelines for working may he clear in the leader’s head, but she does not state them clearly… Work becomes not a matter of doing one’s best along a clear course so much as second-guessing what the leader wants. At the same time, people often feel that the pacesetter doesn’t trust them to work in their own way or to take initiative… As for rewards, the pacesetter either gives no feedback on how people are doing or jumps in to take over when he thinks they’re lagging.
This reads to me like an inverted coaching style - the emphasis is on the leader rather than the team, outcomes are not clearly described or checked for mutual understanding, responsibility is not delegated and feedback is either non-existent or clumsily delivered.
Moving onto the styles with a positive impact on climate, the most effective leadership style was ‘Authoritative’. Again, this is no great surprise - the core function of a leader is to identify a goal and inspire others to achieve it.
The authoritative leader is a visionary - he motivates people by making clear to them how their work fits into a larger vision for the organization. People who work for such leaders understand that what they do matters and why. Authoritative leadership also maximizes commitment to the organization’s goals and strategy. By framing the individual tasks within a grand vision, the authoritative leader defines standards that revolve around that vision. When he gives performance feedback - whether positive or negative - the singular criterion is whether or not that performance furthers the vision.
The three remaining styles (Affiliative, Democratic and Coaching) scored lower than Authoritative, but all had a positive impact on climate, scoring about the same as each other. So each of these styles is clearly important for a well-rounded approach to leadership, although none of them stick out as more important than the others.
Where coaching did stick out like a sore thumb however, was in the fact that it was the most neglected of the leadership styles:
Of the six styles, our research found that the coaching style is used least often. Many leaders told us they don’t have the time in this high-pressure economy for the slow and tedious work of teaching people and helping them grow. But after a first session, it takes little or no extra time. Leaders who ignore this style are passing up a powerful tool: its impact on climate and performance are markedly positive.
When I first read this article it confirmed my feeling that coaching is the tortoise compared to the hare of some charisma-based leadership styles, or the more glamorous, guru-centric approaches to personal development. I’m not saying there isn’t value in a charismatic, high-energy approach, but I do wonder about the end product. For example, I sometimes hear people report amazing experiences on personal development weekends with a famous speaker, from which they return full of plans and enthusiasm - but a few weeks later there’s nothing much to show for it. When asked, they usually say that it was a valuable experience to see such an inspiring speaker, but that they were probably being a bit unrealistic in some of the plans they made.
Similarly, the danger with a Pacesetting leadership style is the fact that the focus is on the leader rather than the team. By comparison, coaching might look a less dynamic style of leadership - the leader listens more than she talks, asking questions and making sure commitments are recorded and followed up - but it does ensure that things get done. And the person being coached is centre-stage, with all the opportunity and responsibility that implies. As Goleman puts it:
Although the coaching style may not scream “bottom-line results,” it delivers them.
Excerpt from Grace Davie ..
From Obligation to Consumption
The changing nature of churchgoing in modern Europe is important to understand, and to do so, one must clarify the constituency: here are Europe’s diminishing, but still significant churchgoers—those who maintain the tradition on behalf of the people described in the previous section. And here an observable change is taking place: from a culture of obligation or duty to a culture of consumption or choice. What until somewhat recently was simply imposed (with all the negative connotations of this word), or inherited (a rather more positive spin), becomes instead a matter of personal choice: “I go to church (or to another religious organization) because I want to, maybe for a short period or maybe for longer, to fulfill a particular rather than a general need in my life and where I will continue my attachment so long as it provides what I want, but I have no obligation either to attend in the first place or to continue if I don’t want to.” As such, this pattern is entirely compatible with vicariousness: “the churches need to be there in order that I may attend them if I so choose.
…
Voluntarism (a market) is beginning to establish itself de facto, regardless of the constitutional position of the churches. Or to continue the “chemical” analogy a little further, a whole set of new reactions are set to that in the longer term (the stress is important) may have a profound effect on the understanding of vicariousness.
…
The stress on experience is important in other ways as well. It can be seen in the choices that the religiously active appear to be making, at least in the British case. Here, within a constituency that is evidently reduced, two options stand out as disproportionately popular. The first is the conservative evangelical church—the success story of late twentieth-century churchgoing, both inside and outside the mainstream. These are churches that draw their members from a relatively wide geographical area and work on a congregational, rather than parish, model. Individuals are invited to opt in rather than opt out, and membership implies commitment to a set of specified beliefs and behavioral codes. For significant numbers of people, these churches over firm boundaries, clear guidance, and considerable support—effective protection from the vicissitudes of life. Interestingly, however, it is the softer charismatic forms of evangelicalism that are doing particularly well; old-fashioned Biblicism, relatively speaking, is losing its appeal.
Very different and less frequently recognized in the writing about religion in modern Britain (as indeed in Europe) is the evident popularity of cathedrals and city-center churches. Cathedrals and their equivalents deal with diverse constituencies. Working from the inside out, they are frequented by regular and irregular worshippers, pilgrims, visitors, and tourists, though the lines between these groups frequently blur. The numbers, moreover, are considerable—the more so on special occasions, both civic and religious. Hence, concerns about upkeep and facilities lead to difficult debates about finance. Looked at from the point of view of consumption, however, cathedrals are places that offer a distinctive product: traditional liturgy, top-class music, and excellence in preaching, all of which take place in a historic and often very beautiful building. A visit to a cathedral is an aesthetic experience, sought after by a wide variety of people, including those for whom membership or commitment presents difficulties. They are places where there is no obligation to opt in or to participate in communal activities beyond the service itself. In this respect, they become almost the mirror image of the evangelical churches already described.
What then is the common feature in these very different stories? It is the experiential or “feel-good” factor, whether this be expressed in charismatic worship, in the tranquility of cathedral evensong, or in a special cathedral occasion (a candlelit carol service or a major civic event). The point is that we feel something; we experience the sacred, the set apart. The purely cerebral is less appealing. Durkheim was entirely correct in this respect: it is the taking part that matters for late modern populations and the feelings so engendered. If we feel nothing, we are much less likely either to take part in the first place or to continue thereafter.
Conscious Incompetence
There are some provisos:
- Because you are choosing to do this, you naturally try to select times and places where you are not going to cause yourself — or others — real damage by making mistakes.
- When possible, you practice Conscious Incompetence away from the eyes of critics, especially bosses or jealous colleagues. This is, however, not always possible. Since your harshest critic is usually yourself, you have to be willing to put up with some internal carping and ignore it.
- You limit the risks by doing a little at a time, when you can. Little and often is a good guide.
- All episodes of Conscious Incompetence should be immediately followed up with time to reflect on what happened, what mistakes you made, and what you can learn from them. Conscious Incompetence is a learning process, so give yourself plenty of time to absorb the lessons.
- However badly you do, you don’t give up — at least until you have proved to yourself that the effort is truly not worth it. You are practicing, not trying to win a competition.
