It is worth noting that leadership failure typically is not the result of the absence of technical skill, but in fact, incompetence in behavioural skill. You will likely gain higher levels of management responsibility based on your technical skill performance, but your overall leadership success is clearly dependent on your behaviour skills since senior leadership success is more strategic oriented rather than operational. The truth is that the so-called soft skills of behaviour are really the hard skills that create the measure of influence in leadership success.
Time and again the fundamental problems of employees relate to a lack of engagement most often resulting from how people consistently experience their leader’s negative behaviour. These leadership failures can be directly linked to the absence of consistent, positive behaviour. In fact, there is inevitably a low level of what we call the skill of “Positive Presence™”, and a lack of understanding of the three fundamental elements of the Positive Presence Behaviour Competencies of Influential Leadership: Self-awareness, Collaboration, and Connection.
You must remember that individual leader behaviour is singularly the most important predictor to organizational performance. A key factor to your influence as a leader is discovering and developing self-awareness. Self-awareness is all about “Knowing Thyself” and confirming that your behaviour is still on course with your followers. Following this principle, leaders need to take the time to periodically evaluate their behaviour performance in light of their technical performance.
The only alternative to this process of self-evaluation is to put your behaviour into an autopilot mode and risk the fate of two commercial airline pilots over-flying their destination city by over an hour — the risk is too great for organizational success when you consider the loss of highly developed and effective relationships. Albert Einstein wrote, “The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.” I would like to modify his words to read that these significant problems cannot be solved with the same level of behaviour we were at when we created them. The good news is we can change.
Intentional and purposeful self-evaluation is imperative to identifying and correcting a leader’s behavioural lapses and limitations. Ongoing self-evaluation of “Knowing Thyself” and confirming that your behaviour is still on course, is a desirable, a practical, a reasonable, and an inexpensive tool to facilitate this process. Highly effective, influential leaders thrive on daily feedback regarding how others are experiencing them in their leadership behaviour. How about you? Are you the kind of leader others desire to follow? Would you follow you as a leader?
You cannot win your performance battles alone. Beginning a process of consistent feedback on your behaviour may begin to make the difference you are looking for, in both your personal and organizational performance.
CORPORATE HARMONY is grateful to Dr. Michael E. Frisina for his contributions to this entry.
Catherine is the President and CEO of CORPORATE HARMONY, providing virtual solutions for leadership development and organizational culture change. Her leadership and coaching experience as a Project Manager in an ever-changing, fast moving technological organization with unrelenting demands drove her to the realization that a positive mindset and strength-building behaviors are essential for today’s complex and chaotic organizational systems. CORPORATE HARMONY’s virtual platform of programs, coaching and performance measurement, is an innovative online technology of tested proprietary content. The world-class content of CORPORATE HARMONY’s Positive Presence Program develops the skill of ‘Positive Presence’ and the necessary ‘Positive Presence Behaviour Competencies’ for maintaining a positive and energized mindset and increased performance in today’s complex work environment, and leading to a culture of collaboration and connection. Catherine’s vision for Corporate Harmony is to bring the skill of “Positive Presence” to the corporate world as it becomes more complex, ambiguous and chaotic. Catherine is uniquely positioned to impact organizations’ productivity and long term success, with her powerful vision of eliminating bad stress from every workplace around the globe, bringing purpose into the people equation to promote healthy, productive and meaningful work cultures and turn the tide on the neglect of mental health on a global scale. Catherine is author of the book: “CORPORATE HARMONY – The Performance Link for Today’s Modern Organization” Catherine can be reached at: Catherine.Osborne@corporateharmony.ca or go to ‘contact us’ on our website www.corporateharmony.ca. Catherine is available for consultation, and can be reached by 519-695-3407.